Analyse and Act on Social Media Trends

How to monitor social media conversations, identify trends and act on them came up in a conversation yesterday regarding the role of internal communications managers. As serendipity would have it, just such a solution cropped up via Google Reader, thanks to Mark Miller (@eusp) over on his End User SharePoint site.

Microsoft has a proof of concept built on SharePoint - Looking Glass (must stress: It's a proof of concept (PoC), no mention of an actual working solution yet and Microsoft PoCs often have a dash of smoke and mirrors about them):

But wafting the smoke aside and stepping around the mirrors, the concept is sound. There are plenty of tools on the Internet for visualising trends from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. (Twistori is a pet favourite of mine for simply observing the world in a conversation) But few go beyond visual analytics. This video explores how to integrate ways that enable you to act on the trends uncovered, what happens next. Interesting stuff. Bet the Microsoft CRM team just love it!... ;-)