Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Right now Social Media is huge. For some people Facebook is the internet. Every TV show you watch has a back channel on twitter, and live commentary on most sports shows are now mentioning the tweets they are reading during the broadcast – indicating the commentators are well aware of how their performance as well as the sport itself are being discussed in this live manner. People were even given early warning of a recent earthquake in the US via Twitter.

As companies and brands race to adopt social media and harness the obvious power in the potential engagement with their fans and others there are scores of tools and analytics being produced and made available to users. Some of these are free, others have a free component as a teaser to get you to purchase their premium services and others are far more consultative and personalised and thus more expensive from the get go.

I have been trialling and researching a lot here recently. My tweet cloud shows my most used word in twitter is #socialmedia.

Here are some of the tools I have been using and trialling. This isn’t a “thou should use these” type of post, but i do invite you to check these out and see if they suit your requirements. No particular order to these.