The first report in the space was Peter Kim's Forrester Wave: Brand Monitoring (September 2006), which introduced us to seven companies: Biz360 Acquired by Attensity in 2010. Nielsen BuzzMetrics Nielsen bought the rest of BuzzMetrics in 2007 and used it as the core of NM Incite , its joint venture with McKinsey, in 2010. Suresh Vittal's January 2009 report, Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms also covered seven companies, two of which two were not in the 2006 report: Radian6 Acquired by Salesforce.com this week, but you knew that. Companies MORE >>

Nielsen gets another call out this week on their data around African American consumers.  SOURCE: Nielsen. For years, companies from PC and online have worked to educate consumers about the malware threat and how to better protect their personal data from attack. It’s a wide open market right now to establish a dominant play in mobile security. Featured Mobile Advertising & Marketing Mobile Commerce Mobile Data Points Metaforic Nielsen Purchase funnelCheck-in offers heaviest between 2-3pm on Saturdays. But don’t ignore Friday night either.  MORE >>

It’s often a confusing decision for marketers to make, and the right choice depends on what brands want. However, new numbers from Nielsen boost the argument that apps are gaining some serious traction (despite an increased focus by brands on the mobile Web and excitement about the improvements promised by HTML5). Comparing 2012 to 2011, the research company discovered U.S. The top five apps continue to be Facebook, YouTube, Android Market, Google Search and Gmail. As marketers, we need to follow the numbers, keep an open mind, and anticipate what’s next. MORE >>

Lots of brands encourage their CEOs and CMOs to join Twitter with their individual profiles and talk about the company from an insider perspective. The need for the top officials to communicate on behalf of the company becomes more apparent through the study done by social media branding firm BRANDfog. The study reveals that consumers and employees regard company leaders who engage on social media positively. . CEO activity on social networks also appears to influence employees’ faith in their company. Tweet. So, is your CEO present on social media yet? MORE >>

Other than your company’s website, most mentions were likely in well-known online news sites or trade industry publication sites. This tool is fast, easy to use, and offers a useful set of filters for finding mentions of a company or topic in specific types of social interaction (e.g. SM2 provides enough social media monitoring power to be relied upon by some fairly large brands, at a price point affordable to midsized and even socially active smaller companies. Nielsen BuzzMetrics. simple tool like Google Alerts would pick up most stray citations. No more. MORE >>