media monitoring

“The human factor is the biggest challenge at the moment.”

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Florian Laszlo

Interview with Florian Laszlo, Secretary General of FIBEP and CEO of Observer, a leading media intelligence company in Austria.

Hi Florian, what is your background and what is included in your current role at Observer?

I studied law and held several positions in communications and event management, and then started at the family company, Observer. After a while, I became part of the executive team, and since 2013 I’m the sole CEO of the company.

As we are a rather small company, my role is quite diverse. I lead the key strategic product development and marketing; it’s a 360 degree role as is usual for executives in smaller companies.

What differs Observer from other social media intelligence companies in Austria?

We are the media monitoring company with the longest and best track record. If you count forums, we have been doing social media monitoring since 1999. We have been monitoring platforms since 2008 or 2009 on a regular basis with different tools to compile analysis for our clients.

We developed our own scanning and spidering technologies, but we use different suppliers so we can combine the feeds to the most optimal outcome.

Observer has been around for a very long time. How has the company been able to stay relevant through different trends over time?

My company is 122 years old and has been doing media monitoring since the beginning. You see that new trends seem to be really new if you look at them from a close range, but if you take a few steps back, they’re not so new, they’re just an aberration of the same thing.

I think that the human way of communicating and engaging with each other didn’t change over the years that much. I think that the development of the media industry will go way slower than you would expect if you see what new types of media are being developed. On the basis of human communication, it stays the same, regardless if it’s on Facebook or on a handheld device, it’s still human communication. The big question is how to create a business model that’s adapted to the changing landscape, but still takes into account the relatively unchanged basics of human communication.

What are your greatest challenges ahead at Observer when it comes to serving your customer analysis and developing your offer?

The biggest challenge is that while we get access to data from the platforms, mainly Facebook, the data has been reduced in depth several times. That poses an issue that we have to deal with.

Another challenge is getting the clients to understand the relevance of what we’re doing so they don’t just think that we have cool analytics, but truly understand the necessity of our work for their daily decision making.

Have you recently, or are you planning to, release any new technology-based solutions that will add to or improve your services?

I do not see any new solutions or technology coming around. We have to optimize the existing tools and approaches. The next challenge is on the side of implementation; we still see large limitations that technology and artificial intelligence has in delivering results that are final and can be sent directly to the client. The biggest challenge is the compilation of relevant and understandable results; the human factor is the biggest challenge at the moment.

All clients have different levels of understanding how media can be analyzed; what is the most common misconception that your clients have?

The biggest misconception that clients have is that gathering and analyzing data is easy, and the second misconception is that they feel that the data just falls out of the machine. That is not the case and can leave clients quite unhappy because they expected something different and are not satisfied with the result.

Clients often feel this process should be quite cheap or completely free, but social is actually much more expensive than some old school things because there is so much work involved. Data access alone involves three figure sums, which definitely doesn’t meet the expectation of the clients.

With the experience you have in this industry, being with Observer for the last 17 years, what changes in the industry have been the most unexpected over the years?

I would not see unexpected changes—as technology progresses, humans are sticking to their known behavior and perhaps will never change at all.  The big difference is seen between perception and practical life concerning the importance of social media. The clients still see print, radio and television as relevant, while everyone is talking about online and social.  The difference between the quality of a PDF document and a link, and the difference between seeing a physical result or visiting a website, is the important thing, and seen as more valuable and priceworthy, which leads to less price sensitivity there.

When it comes to the actual data behind the media intelligence you do, what kind of data or media can be interesting in the future that is not used today?

We are probably looking at much less data that we can access in the future than right now because the access will be reduced and limited as platforms are more reluctant to share data, and there is the legal issue of privacy. With less data from social media, the importance of analyzing the data that we get is also rising.

You are the Secretary General of FIBEP, which is heading towards the 50th FIBEP World Media Intelligence Congress in Copenhagen in October. What are your expectations for the event, and what do you think will be the hot topics and discussions there? 

The hottest topic will be design, specifically user interface and experience. As we have so much data, but no one can digest it, you need analysis that compiles it into digitized form and processes it to make it understandable to get insights. Getting more data is not the important thing, it’s more about getting smart and relevant data that can be extracted from the large number of data volumes we can access.

The second aspect of the event is to meet and network with colleagues from around the world. We share our experiences with each other so we can walk away from the event more informed.

What are the greatest challenges for FIBEP as an organization in the near future when it comes to supporting its members?

The challenge is the same for all organizations, which is staying relevant in the changing landscape and providing relevant information to members. I’m not doubtful that the challenge will be met easily in the future.

Since we don’t send out data, but make human contact and meeting possible and interesting, I’m sure it will become even more relevant as the world grows together and the media markets develops, making it more important to share insights.

FIBEP shares a lot of members and interests with AMEC, International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of Communication. How would you describe the relationship between the two organizations today and in the future?

We have a very positive relationship with AMEC because we work together on many projects and will continue doing so. We have two different strongholds—AMEC concentrates on the valuation part, while FIBEP has the historic base in data gathering and processing, which was called monitoring once. It’s about data as a first step, and the second is analysis; no data means no analysis. That is the reason many of the members belong to both organizations, so that they can discuss analysis and evaluation.

How would you like to see FIBEP change over the next 10 years?

I would say it will change and needs to as the industry changes, but as I don’t know how the industry will change, I can’t say how FIBEP will. Predictions are a lot harder than in earlier times, so the solution is staying agile and adapting quickly. What is obvious is that the growing professionalization of the industry and corporate structures leads to a more professional structure of the association in general; not so much pro bono work and not so much interest of young professionals in doing that.

Members expect the same from the association as you would from a professional workshop organizer, that is the general change in Western society that affects FIBEP, and the organization needs to be flexible to adapt to what industry trends will bring.

How do you think the media intelligence industry will change in the next 5 years, and what are the greatest challenges?

I think the industry will grow in importance and will see new competitors coming into the field from consulting. We will see the move from monitoring and evaluation to insights and to consulting. For example, bookkeeping was once a simple service, and now the Big 4 are doing consulting on a quite consistent and high level, and they still do bookkeeping themselves as well.

That will happen in the media industry as well, so we will add on consulting and we will be much more competitive with classic consulting companies who will try to cover our special areas as well.

The greatest challenge is new competitors with a different background; the successful ones will move up the food chain from providing limited and specific services to broader consulting roles, as that is what the market expects and where the outsourcing trends will lead to.

Look what happened to companies that offered map services when Google Maps started doing it for free. Someone can say they will compete for free, making it a big threat to others.

By Renata Ilitsky

“The media intelligence industry will need to quickly grow their insights and advisory skills”

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Francois van Dyk

Interview with Francois van Dyk, Head of Operations at Ornico Group in South Africa

Hi Francois, what is your background and what is included in your current role at Ornico Group?

I studied, taught and worked in Public Relations – having a passion for the journalism, advertising and marketing fields. In my role as Head: Operations at Ornico, I am blessed to work not only in the journalism and PR fields, but also in advertising and social media. I oversee all the Ornico divisions which monitor and analyses editorial, advertising and social media content across various platforms such as TV, radio, outdoor, online, social, print, mobile and even direct marketing. I also serve on AMEC’s Education Committee as well as the IAB South Africa’s Measurement Council.

What do you see as the greatest challenges ahead for Ornico Group when it comes to serving your customers monitoring and analysis and in developing your offer?

The fragmentation of the media space is an obvious challenge as you need to access far more data sources. However the true challenge will come from a data integration perspective – and this includes the client data. To make true sense of data, one will need to integrate media and customer, financial, employee and a myriad of other data in a sensible way. Customers interact with brands across many touch points, not just the media space, and great insights become possible if these disparate data can be combined and analyzed.

Why did you choose to expand your business to Nigeria and Kenya, countries that are quite remote from South Africa?

As our South African clients started expanding their businesses to the rest of the African continent, it was a natural fit for us to move with them as we could provide them with the same services. Kenya is obviously a major player in East Africa, and Nigeria in West Africa, so it makes sense to establish a presence in these regions. Despite tough global economic conditions, a lot of opportunities remain in Africa.

Do you have any specific plans to expand your business in the near future, like opening new markets or offering new products?

We are continuously building relationships across the world with other industry players through our FIBEP and AMEC partnerships, so this has proved very valuable. From a geographical perspective, we will be focusing on this – depending on client demand obviously. We are, however, continuously trying to innovate and improve the client experience so innovative functionalities and services always remain a priority.

All clients have different levels of understanding how media can be analyzed; what is the most common misconception that your clients have?

Though we are working hard to educate clients about the best practices, such as AMEC’s Barcelona Principles, you do find that some are still only interested in AVEs (Advertising Value Equivalents). It astounds me that anyone would be looking at these “values,” as they are fundamentally flawed and wrong. It pains me personally because this behavior by some public relations practitioners is actually very damaging to an industry I am very passionate about.

What is the current situation for licensing content for media monitoring in South Africa? Is the agreement between SAMMA and DALRO still in effect, and does it cover all aspects?

The agreement between DALRO and SAMMA is still in place, although there are negotiations to update it. SAMMA members are very happy to have a central organization to deal with when it comes to copyright fees, but everyone believes a lot more can be done to make membership, payments, distribution and value more streamlined and comprehensive.

Are there specific or typical needs in the South African market for media intelligence that you think differs from the rest of the region, or the world in general?

Our markets are relatively the same as the rest of the world. Our biggest challenge is really to keep services very cost effective as our clients generally do not have the budgets a lot of the international brands have.

Which social platforms are the most important to your clients, and which ones do you see having the most potential in the future when it comes to gathering relevant information for your customers?

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are the main social platforms, while there is a great demand for LinkedIn information as well. Facebook, due to its global dominance, will obviously remain very important. Snapchat and other smaller channels have seen very little local adoption at this stage, so it remains to be seen what influence they will have in the African markets. Whatsapp, Wechat and other messaging services are also hugely popular. As social channels tighten access to data due to privacy legislation and their own commercial interests, I suspect it will become a far bigger challenge for brands to gain independent insights.

What kind of data that would help you get better analysis is the hardest to get hold of?

There is obviously a massive amount of data being created – and not all of it is confined in the media space. For proper measurement and evaluation to be conducted, we will need access to a far wider amount of data, and not just from the media space. Clients sit with masses of internal data, whether it is CRM data, sales figures, expenses, marketing, Google Analytics, etc,. which are all in their own silos. Combining relevant data like this with traditional media data to create insights will become a very powerful tool. It is understandably very sensitive data for a brand, which they will not part with easily; hence we have seen the need to grow traditional media intelligence into a more advisory partnership with clients. One can expect a lot of growth in this space.

What kind of data or media that you do not have monitoring on today, can be interesting in the future?

The proliferation of media is an obvious challenge to the media intelligence industry, so I believe the industry will need to find ways to monitor all these new channels. However, as media becomes personalized and a more on-demand service, the audience will also become even more critical. I have long believed that the communication industry has been too obsessed with specific media channels and communication “outputs” in what they would consider ‘vanity” media that many have forgotten about their audiences. The audience will be key in the future.

How do you think the media intelligence industry will change in the next five years?

Traditional monitoring is relatively stagnant across the world, so the media intelligence industry will need to quickly grow their insights and advisory skills. Major investments will also need to be made into machine learning, artificial intelligence and data sciences. As The Economist recently said “data is the new oil,” but what will give the media intelligence industry an edge over the big technology players will be the human element – both from a client services and an advisory perspective. People do business with people, and this is a fundamental principle that will remain through time.

By Renata Ilitsky

Interview with Matti Palm from Greenhill Relations about Twingly Insight

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Här kan du läsa intervjun på svenska.

On Wednesday we revealed Twingly Insight, blog analytics for professionals. Matti Palm works at the Swedish PR agency Greenhill Relations and had the chance to try Insight before the public launch. We have asked him a couple of question about his first impressions, why blog analytics are important and who can benefit from them the most.

Who are you and what are you working with?
My name is Matti Palm, I’m PR consultant with a background in journalism and media analytics. Together with my colleagues I run Greenhill Relations, a PR and communications agency with a clear focus on social media consultancy.

At Greenhill you have been doing blog analytics for a while now in cooperation with Twingly. Why do you think that is important?
The blogosphere is complex and consists of several different clusters of blogs, for example political blogs, fashion blogs or tech blogs. Without a deep analysis you don’t know which blogs are the leading ones and which are those that everybody else listens to.

On Wednesday Twingly launched Insight and you already had the chance to try it. What do you think about the tool?
I love statistics, thus I naturally see a lot of value in Insight. But Insight isn’t only for statistic geeks. Twingly is the only player which has raw data about blogs which reaches many months back into the past, which is a requirement for being able to create meaningful blog analytics.

How do you at Greenhill use Twingly Insight and the information you gather?
In our eyes the best way to start with a new client is with an extensive analysis. In the cases when that is possible the analysis creates a solid basis to work with during upcoming years and a shared understanding about the status quo and what needs to be done.

How do you think Insight will help companies and who can benefit the most from using the service?
I hope people will try to gain answers to real questions when looking at the stats, instead of only using it to see whether their own activities paid off and to get key metrics. In my eyes the best start would be concrete questions like “What are we going to accomplish if we start a blog” and “Which role will our blog play within the existing blog landscape”. With Twingly Insight you can get answers to those questions. Those who will benefit from Insight the most are information and communication professionals at companies and PR agencies, but also planners working at advertising agencies as well as customer support representatives.

Twingly and Greenhill will together hold courses on how to do a blog analysis (in Swedish only). Can you tell us a bit more about this initiative and who should participate?
Yes this will be a lot of fun! Our goal is to help people to get started and succeed with the analysis. But we’ll also discuss a lot about how to use the data you gather. Information and communication professionals as well as PR consultants are our main target group, but I hope we will be able to attract even other people interested in or working with the field of blog analytics and social media.

Here you can read more about the courses (in Swedish).

How do you personally think the blogosphere will evolve in the next years? Will people blog more or less?
I’m not sure if they will blog more or less. But blogs are really the core of social media and will continue to be so. Think about it: There is nothing better to tweet than then link to your latest blog post.

Intervju med Matti Palm från Greenhill Relations om Twingly Insight

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Here you can read this interview in English.

På onsdaglanserade vi Twingly Insight, vår verktyg för professionella blogganalyser. Matti Palm jobbar på PR-byrån Greenhill Relations och har kunnat testa Twingly Insight innan lanseringen. Vi har frågat honom om vad han tycker, varför blogganalyser är viktiga och vem som kan dra mest nytta av dem.

Matti Palm

Berätta vem du är och vad du jobbar med.
Jag heter Matti Palm och är PR-konsult med ett förflutet inom journalistik och medieanalyser. Nu driver jag, tillsammans med mina kollegor, Greenhill Relations. Vi arbetar en hel del med rådgivning kring sociala medier.

På Greenhill har ni gjort blogganalyser sedan länge i samarbete med Twingly. Varför tyckte ni att det var viktigt?
Bloggosfären är komplex och består egentligen av flera olika kluster av bloggar, exempelvis politikbloggar, modebloggar eller teknikbloggar. Utan en analys vet man inte vilka bloggar som är viktiga, vilka de andra lyssnar på, bland annat.

Nu har Twingly lanserat Insight och du har kunnat testa tjänsten redan innan. Vad tycker du om den?
Jag älskar ju statistik, så här får jag såklart allt jag behöver i den vägen. Men det är inte bara det. Twingly är den enda aktören som har rådata från bloggar som sträcker sig många månader tillbaka. Och har man inte det så måste man veta i förväg vad man kommer att vara intresserad av när man i framtiden vill göra en analys. Så strukturerad är inte jag, helt enkelt!

Hur använder ni på Greenhill tjänsten och vad gör ni med informationen ni får ut?
Vi älskar att starta arbetet med en ny kund med en grundlig analys. Det är såklart inte alltid praktiskt möjligt. Men i de fall vi gjort det så har analysen skapat en grund att stå på i flera år framåt. Det skapar också en gemensam förståelse tillsammans med kunden hur spelplanen ser ut.

På vilket sätt tror du att Insight kommer hjälpa företag och vem kan egentligen ha nytta av tjänsten?
Jag hoppas att folk kommer att ställa verkliga frågor när de tittar på statistiken och inte bara använda den till att följa upp sina egna aktiviteter och nyckeltal. Jag vill helst starta med en konkret fråga, exempelvis: vad kommer vi att kunna åstadkomma om vi själva startar en blogg? Vilken roll kommer den bloggen att få? Sådana svar kan man få med Twingly Insight. De som först och främst kommer att använda den är informationsproffs på företag och PR-konsulter. Men jag tror att många fler skulle kunna hitta på saker som jag inte kan tänka mig, exempelvis planners på reklambyråer och kundtjänstansvariga. Jag skull gärna göra en analys tillsammans med dem!

Twingly och Greenhil kommer tillsammans hålla kurser om hur man gör blogganalyser. Kan du berätta lite mer om kursen och vem som borde komma?
Ja, det ska bli jätteroligt! Vi kommer att hjälpa folk att komma igång och göra en analys. Men vi kommer nog lika mycket att diskutera vad man kan ha en analys till. Framförallt tror jag informationsproffs på företag och organisationer och PR-konsulter som vill kunna sälja analyser kommer. Men jag hoppas också att vi kan locka andra, exempelvis de jag nämnde tidigare, folk från reklambyråer och kundtjänstansvariga.

Här kan ni läsa mer om utbildningen.

Vad tror du personligen om hur blogosfären kommer utvecklas de närstma åren? Kommer folk bloggar mer eller mindre?
Jag vet inte om det blir mer eller mindre. Men bloggar finns verkligen i centrum av de sociala medierna. Det finns inget bättre att twittra om än sitt senaste blogginlägg!

Twingly launches Wiki for German Social Media Monitoring Tools

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(The German version of this post you’ll find here.)

Do you also want to know what’s been said about you on the interweb? Google reveals it all, but still, what is the quintessence of it? You realise that you need help. So you google again in order to find out who could help you, but crikey, there’s a whole jungle of different services out there. And the question remains – which one of them suits your needs best?

You’re not alone with this dilemma. Daily hundreds or even thousands of people in marketing and PR are exposed to it. Anyway we’d like to help. That’s why today we launch Medienbewachen.de (in German!).

On Medienbewachen.de you’ll find the the most important social media monitoring services on the German market. Many of them have already posted a short presentation which helps you decide whether a service could be something for you by giving you details regarding the main features and prices.

Medienbewachen.de shall become the most important reference-site to turn to in order to find quickly the SMM-service that suits ones needs best.

Already now over a dozen services present themselves in a short presentation and there are more to come during the following week.

The first services to register were bc.lab, blueReport, Brandwatch, BUZZRank, cogia intelligence, construktiv, ethority, Infospeed, Kantar Media, Landau Media, na-media sonar, pressrelations,  rapid-i, Toocan, Vico Research Consulting and Webbosaurus. 

The idea is to give all companies offering SMM-services for the German market the possibility to easily post their presentation and even update their information in the future. We therefore chose the form of a media-wiki.

Do you offer a social media monitoring tool that is not listed yet? The go and present yourself!

Why does Twinglylaunch Medienbewachen.de? Like most of you we also experienced that it is almost impossible to keep track of all social media monitoring tools. That is why we already in April 2010 decided to launch  Mediebevakare.se. Following that we got the question from our German friends if we couldn’t set up something similar for the German market. That is how Medienbewachen.de became one of my projects this year – and finally it is live!

A big Thank you also goes to Stefanie Aßmann. Her article about different SMM-tools on the German web magazine t3n  was an inspiration to finally start this project. Stefanie wrote her master thesis about social media monitoring, which she published in parts on her blog. Both of us had a very giving discussion during this year’s dmexco and we are in regular exchange since then.

Stefanie continues to write about the latest happenings within the monitoring industry. One of the many reasons why you find her blog Social Media Monitoring linked to Medienbewachen.de. We consider it a very valuable read and recommend that you pop by there once in a while and fresh up your knowledge! Read Stefanie’s article on today’s launch here.

Last and definitely not least we would like to thank all suppliers of SMM-Tools who already present themselves on Medienbewachen.de. You and your enthusiasm are the central part for the future success of this new platform!

/Anja Rauch

Twingly launcht Wiki für deutsche Social Media Monitoring Tools

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(The English version of this article is available here)

Gehören Sie zu denen, die gerne wissen würden, was man so im Netz über Sie sagt? Und dann fangen Sie an zu googlen, sehen was alles so über Sie im Netz steht, wissen aber nicht, wie Sie die wichtigsten Informationen und Schlüsse für sich daraus ziehen? Sie stellen fest, dass Sie Hilfe brauchen. Wieder googeln also. Social Media Monitoring heißt das Schlagwort. Und dann trifft Sie (mental) vielleicht der Schlag, denn Sie entdecken, dass es eine Unmenge an Werkzeugen gibt, die Ihnen potentiell helfen könnten. Bloß – welches davon ist das beste für Sie?

Diese Frage stellen sich wohl hunderte, wenn nicht tausende Marketing- und PR-Menschen jeden Tag. Wir hoffen, dass wir da nun Abhilfe schaffen können. Denn seit heute gibt es Medienbewachen.de (auf Deutsch!).

Auf Medienbewachen.de finden Sie die wichtigsten Social Media Monitoring Anbieter des deutschsprachigen Raumes gelistet, viele davon mit einer kurzen Präsentation, die Ihnen einen schnellen Überblick zu Service und Preisen gibt. Medienbewachen.de soll also Ihre neue Referenz-Seite sein, um einen zu Ihnen passenden Social Media Monitoring Dienst schnell zu finden.

Bislang sind bereits mehr als ein Dutzend Dienste mit einer Präsentation vertreten, und es kommen noch einige in den nächsten Wochen hinzu.

Die ersten Anbieter, die sich auf Medienbewachen.de vorstellen sind bc.lab, blueReport, Brandwatch, BUZZRank, cogia intelligence, construktiv, ethority, Infospeed, Kantar Media, Landau Media, na-media sonar, pressrelations, rapid-i,  Toocan, Vico Research Consulting and Webbosaurus. 

Die Idee ist, dass alle Anbieter von Social Media Monitoring Diensten sich hier listen. Die Form eines Media-Wiki ermöglicht schnelles Einstellen und Aktualisieren der eigenen Präsentation.

Auf diese Weise soll Medienbewachen.de zu der Referenzseite für deutsche Social Media Monitoring Dienste werden!

Sind Sie Anbieter und Ihr Dienst ist noch nicht vertreten? Dann los, stellen Sie sich vor!

Warum launcht Twingly Medienbewachen.de? Auch wir finden, dass es kaum möglich ist, einen Überblick im Dschungel des Angebots der unterschiedlichen Social Media Monitoring Werkzeuge zu behalten. Im April 2010 launchten wir deshalb bereits für den schwedischen Markt Mediebevakare.se. Daraufhin erhielten wir Nachfragen wo denn eine deutsche Version bliebe. Dies wurde damit zu einem von meinen Projekten und nun ist es endlich live!

Mein großer Dank geht dabei an Stefanie Aßmann, deren Artikel über verschiedene SMM-Tools bei t3n dazu im Frühjahr den ersten Anstoß zum Projekt gab. Stefanie hat ihre Master-Thesis zum Thema geschrieben und diese auf Ihrem Blog veröffentlicht. Wir beide hatten auf der diesjährigen dmexco ein äußerst konstruktives Gespräch zum Thema und sind seitdem im Austausch hierzu miteinander.

Stefanie schreibt auch weiterhin über aktuelle Neuigkeiten aus der Monitoring-Branche, deshalb finden Sie ihren Blog Social Media Monitoring auch auf Medienbewachen.de verlinkt. Es lohnt sich wirklich, dort ab und an mal reinzuschauen! Hier ist Stefanies Artikel zum heutigen Launch.

Vor allem aber bedanken wir uns herzlich bei allen SMM-Anbietern, die bereits Teil von Medienbewachen.de sind bzw. es zukünftig sein werden. Sie und ihr Engagement  sind das Herzstück für den Erfolg dieser neuen Plattform!

/Anja Rauch



Data – How Twingly helps Media Monitoring Businesses

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Everybody is talking about data from social media sources and the opportunities for businesses it brings, if one knows how to use it. But how, is the question often asked. And – do we really have to?

This year, NEXT Conference in Berlin had Data as its main topic, and in various sessions it was discussed how important data nowadays is for businesses. In autumn there will be the Research & Results in Munich where mostly market researchers come together to discuss the new challenges that collecting data from social media sources brings.

Recently I chatted with someone in classic market research about this, and it became evident that especially data from Facebook, Twitter and Blogs become increasingly important for that area.

Why is data from blogs and social media platforms increasingly important?

Blogs, Twitter and Facebook are only some examples of the platforms (see Ethority’s social media prism to the right) where consumers are and exchange their views with their friends as well as with the entire community. So everybody running a business knows that one has to be where ones customers are, in order to understand their needs, develop the products they want and most importantly – sell these products as well as offering great customer service.

But one does not only need to be present where ones customers are. One also wants to listen to what they have to say in general.

The competition is on – how popular is my product in comparison to others? Do people love my brand or do they hate it? Did they ever hear about it? Only who knows that can really optimise their products and services, find their niche, get the most out of it – and even come up with new innovative ideas for products and services, knowing the potential benefits they bring to ones customers. Maybe one would even need to find new customer groups?

Then, of course the big question is, how on Earth do I find out what’s been said about me or my brand(s)?

There are a lot of media monitoring services around – and the often quoted dilemma is that there is no service that satisfies all needs and wishes. Well, I guess that’s why there are that many around in the first place. Some of them are either specialised in a certain niche, like i.e. media monitoring for the finance or the travel sector, or they simply try to develop their services to be the best all-round solution and compete with each other that way.

Regardless which way media monitoring companies choose, we at Twingly can deliver blog data to all of them.

In fact, we get quite a few requests about our blog data and the number of our data customers more than doubled during the last 12 months. These are all our API Customers , as we call them.

So let us tell you a bit more about how we could potentially support your media monitoring business with our blog data!

We actually have 3 API’s.

Number 1: Livefeed – This is raw blog data at its finest.
You get all blog data as an XML-feed at the same time as when it enters our system. You can then save the data at your end, and perform the analysis you want to do. You subscribe per language and we give you access via an API-key. Livefeed is mostly used by our bigger clients such as Radian6 and Meltwater Buzz, who then feed our blog data into their system as additional sources.

Number 2: Analytics – 0ur search-API.
This API is based on our blog search – here you can just throw a bunch of keywords into the search interface and get results across all languages (or just specific ones) and that up to 4 months back in history. Twingly Analytics is suitable for media monitoring services that don’t want to deal with the super-technical side of things but that actually want to get results for certain keywords directly out of the pool of blog data. The results come as an XML-feed and can then be used for further analysis on their own system. Silobreaker’s services are a good example for using our search API in order to find additional sources in blogs about certain topics – for example their news trends.

Number 3: RSS-API – the best of basic!
You probably know that you can search on Twingly.com for a certain keyword (i.e. Twingly as a brand) and that you can subscribe to the results via RSS for free? Now, some of you might want to use this feed commercially and at a higher volume. Then you can get an API-key from us which allows you, against a low monthly fee, to use this feed for your purposes. That can be media monitoring, but you could also use it to create a customised top list of blogs that talk about your products. The Swedish publisher Norstedts created a top list of blogged about books that they choose by using the RSS-API.
Now, if you want to know more about any of these feeds and their technique, you can either contact us or you are welcome to check out our FAQ and get back to us with specific questions.

P.S.:
A bit earlier this year, we presented some of our customers, including interviews with Silobreaker and Radian6.

If you are from Sweden and looking for some companies that do media monitoring, then you might want to check out Mediebevakare.se as well, where a lot of Swedish media monitoring companies present their tools and services.

We at Twingly founded Mediebevakare.se, because like you we felt that an overview of all the different media monitoring services available is needed . So please check it out and spread the word if you know someone who is looking for a service, or if you know a tool that should be listed as well.

If you have a media monitoring business on the Swedish market but you are not based here, feel free to set up your presentation on Mediebevakare anyway. We can help you if needed – just let us know!

An interview with the CEO of Silobreaker

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We continue our series of interviews with companies that have decided to partner with Twingly to add additional value to their services. This time we asked Kristofer Månsson, the CEO of Silobreaker, to give us some insights into the world of media monitoring and intelligence. The London-based firm connects to our API in order to get the latest data from the blogosphere.

Hello Kristofer. Silobreaker offers a variety of media monitoring and search services. Who is your target group?
Basically, anyone whose job it is to follow, monitor, analyze and understand what’s going on in the world. This includes corporate, military and government intelligence professionals; investment managers, analysts and others in financial services and consulting; PR, communications and other more traditional media-monitors; journalists, researchers and “news junkies” in general.

Give us an insight into the world of intelligence and media monitoring. Where is your industry heading?
We obviously believe in an increasing demand for “smart” technology, since that’s the business we are in. Insight no longer comes from access to information but from your ability to make sense of it. And we cannot solve information overload simply by trying to read more articles. We don’t have the time nor the brain capacity. At Silobreaker, we regard aggregated content as the raw material and not the refined product. We also want to move away from traditional keyword search, since it requires you to know what you are looking for and it returns nothing but “hits” as results (often far too many). The opportunity and competitive advantage comes from the automated analytical processing of the aggregate media flow. That requires computer power and software that is capable of reading, analyzing and contextualizing the information flow and then presenting the findings in intuitive and easy-to-understand results. We want our users to spend less time on searching and have more time for interpretation and decision-making. Technically speaking, Silobreaker combines content aggregation with search, statistical and semantic text-mining and explanatory visualizations to meet a large range of user requirements.

Among other sources you do monitor social media. How important is this area to you?
It has been an important complement to traditional news media for quite a while. Social media have become the obvious channel for things like expressing product sentiment, for the messaging from political parties, NGOs and special interest groups; for calling to demonstrations, and for reporting from major events around the world, including from such places where traditional media is banned or state-controlled. Companies simply cannot afford to ignore social media, nor can analysts who in turn are following the companies.

Are there any new features or services that you are especially proud of?
We have recently launched Silobreaker Premium, a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering for corporate, financial, military and government users. Silobreaker Premium combines aggregation of news content from both traditional and social media together with a suite of analytical tools and visualizations. The aim is to help our customers understand quickly the effects of unexpected events and to discover angles, relationships, stories and perspectives before they become obvious.

You and a bunch of your colleagues are Swedish, but your headquarter is in London. What’s the background on that?
We started Silobreaker with only English-language content, which made UK and US users the obvious targets. So we decided to run business development out of London and product development in Stockholm. Today, we deal with several other languages, including Swedish, and we now also have local sales staff in Sweden. However, 75% of the traffic to our news search engine Silobreaker.com still comes from the UK and North America, so the English-speaking markets remain our largest user base, and London remains a good base for the company.

iMente.com starts using Twingly Data

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Our latest data customer is iMente.com, a Spanish online media monitoring company, that now uses Twingly data to monitoring the blogosphere. As a subscriber of their monitoring tool you can search for keywords or your own brand name in either news, blogs, press releases or so-called official bulletins. A big number of filter possibilities and further functionalities is available.

Anyone interested can apply for a 15-day-trial on their website and test it to the heart’s content. A nice new and useful toy not only for analysts, marketeers or PR-bureaus it seems.

This is what the result page for “Show me all blogs that wrote in English about Bing today/yesterday” on our test account looks like:

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