No details on the value of the deal – paidContent estimates double digits based on Cymfony’s $24m raised in VC – and we don’t have any official word yet.

Without knowing much about either company, I’d guess this is a smart move for TNS, and a poor decision by Cymfony. We’re only just starting to see companies wake up to the concept that they need to monitor and engage social media, so Cymfony likely sold way too early. Then again, Cymfony may have gotten triple digits and smiling all the way to the bank!Tag:

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The folks at Forrester have completed what looks to be a pretty comprehensive analysis of the most popular brand monitoring services (e.g., Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Cymfony, Biz360, Umbria, Brandimensions, MotiveQuest, and Factiva).

I can’t tell for certain how deep this report goes, it costs a thousand bucks, but they’ve posted a Q&A and an executive summary along with the graphic you see embedded here, which tease some of the findings. A few of the nuggets (verbatim):

• Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Cymfony are market Leaders, thanks to their comprehensive technology platforms and extensive data source coverage.
• MotiveQuest – with the most services-focused and strategy-oriented offering – finishes as the leading Strong Performer.
• Biz360′s focus on traditional PR monitoring services lands it as a midrange Strong Performer.
• Rounding out the Strong Performer category are Factiva, with its strong print orientation, and Umbria, which excels at speaker segmentation.
• Brandimensions falls into the Contender category, with targeted expertise in the automotive, entertainment, and pharmaceutical industries and an approach that relies heavily on human filtering.

Brand monitoring online is top-o-mind for a lot of companies that recognize the need for conversational marketing and communication, but lack the tools and insights to analyze and measure the impact and success of their efforts. It’s a real pain, and unfortunately, where there’s pain there’s also exploitation. I think some of the popular brand monitoring services have a reputation of over-promising and under-delivering — which is why I’m glad to see a report like this surface.

Brand monitoring and sentiment mining online is a tough nut to crack, I personally don’t think any of these companies have it nailed yet, but some are getting close.

For that reason, it’s good to see that Forrester will be revisiting this report next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a big shake up in the rankings, perhaps even some new players to watch. Forrester, if you’re listening, I’d totally understand if you wanted to send this to me for “review.”;p

Related Posts: Social Media Monitoring

Synthesizing Social Media

Mining and Monitoring the Conversation Gap

Blog Monitoring As PR Service

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Mike Manuel is the founder of the award winning Media Guerrilla blog. Media Guerrilla is an insiders take on the practice of technology public relations with a focus on the issues, tactics and trends that are specific to the tech industry.

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Each section includes a briefing book, best practices and more. Kudos to Cymfony for driving this. Jim Nail provides more background.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

The responses were diverse.

Jonathan Carson from NielsenBuzzmetrics said idea of having a conversation doesn’t scale; it’s more about participating in a culture of conversation.

Taking similar tone, Jim Nail from Cymfony said that if your blog generates a few comments, you should respond. However, when you get into the big numbers it becomes far more difficult. He suggests analyzing the common themes and then responding to them with a blog post or – and this last point was interesting – through traditional PR channels.

I am in Jim’s corner. It’s very hard to respond to every comment that comes into a blog from customers when the volume is high. However, the tricky part is that consumers may have the expectation that you will.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

Congrats to Jim. There’s a lot of attention paid to the free blog search sites, but don’t overlook a dogfight heating up on the high-end as well between the vendors who provide paid services. This group includes Intelliseek, Buzzmetrics and Cymfony.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

Cymfony, a reservoir for media analysis and marketing intelligence, announced the agreement with search engine PubSub today. Under the agreement, PubSub will provide targeted content for Cymfony Orchestra dashboard clients while developing industry and target segment analysis products.

Under the terms of the deal, Cymfony will license PubSub’s prospective search subscription services for use in Cymfony Orchestra, a market intelligence dashboard application that automatically monitors and analyzes mainstream media and consumer generated media under one converged Web-based service platform.

Cymfony clients will receive unlimited access to blogs and other non-traditional information sources via PubSub’s prospective search engine. These clients will be instantly notified as soon as the search terms they have subscribed to are mentioned on blogs and syndicated websites, delivering matching results in real-time.

The company says access to blog and nontraditional content helps marketers to make critical business decisions. Cymfony’s dashboard is intended to proved in-depth and dynamic insight into consumer preferences, employee’s concerns, competitors’ strengths and weaknesses and emerging threats to company reputation.

“PubSub’s service is a natural complement to Cymfony’s market intelligence and media analysis solutions,” said Andrew Bernstein, CEO of Cymfony. “PubSub’s technology will provide highly specific and timely information from blogs and other forms of consumer-generated media that will allow organizations to seize opportunities, create a competitive advantage or mitigate potential damaging situations before they become crises.”

I am confused, though, on his comment that blogging isn’t his job. Isn’t it part of the “Evangelizing, strategizing and managing development of new mobile products and services” that he does for Yahoo mobile?

I have now been blogging on PR for two years – my little anniversary was July 2nd, and as soon as the new design is ready, I’ll post my anniversary post – and when I do speak to other PR firms or people, the first thing I note is that they don’t need to be blogging.

Why?

Because blogging isn’t for every corporation, it isn’t for every industry. But, I do note that they need to be aware of what is being said, to track the conversations with PubSub, Technorati, Blogpulse, Bacons, Cymfony, eWatch … well, there are lots of services.

Beattie calls out a few PR bloggers, but doesn’t say who he thinks are the worst hacks and players. Why not? If you want to be truly transparent – which seems to be this big thing out in the blogosphere – name names (albeit in a good, non-Red baiting sense). Someone must have really annoyed him, and he thinks we should all ignore those people … but doesn’t give us a clue on whom to ignore. Or, he can’t since he’s referring to one of the PR firms for Yahoo.

Beattie has valid points – there are PR firms and PR people that are abusing the blogosphere. I rail against them also, but unfortunately there is a learning curve. I think the so-called blogging experts are just that – so-called. I think the people and the firms that pollute comments to plug clients are lazy, but likely under orders from bosses or clients, and afraid to push back.

Blogs are about to move into version 2, where the purists will unfortunately be pushed out by the corporations and the agencies. It’s just the same maturation of the market that the Web went under the first time. Will it kill conversation? Likely not.

Steve Rubel has his own take on it, but mentions he loves Beattie more than I did here – I don’t know Russell, so I would feel odd proclaiming any love for him. Respect, yes. Love, no.

1.30 PM MST Update: Well, it turns out that it’s Steve Rubel that Russell Beattie is talking about – hey, at least it’s not me that he hates. Yes, hates is a strong word, but come on, the title is funny.

And, Steve … so, you respond to criticisms from A-listers (but, hey, you hate that term after you got slammed for using it), but if others bring up issues, you ignore them? I’m still waiting to see your response on this.

While you espouse the values of the blogosphere and pitching bloggers, it appears that you have made some of the same mistakes you rail against – and recently. Plus, the Amazon card is embarassing – for you and for everyone else in PR.

Links:
Russell Beattie’s Post and Resume

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Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.

He authors the popular Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy’s opinions and views – on public relations, publicity and other things.