August 13, 2012, 12:14 PM — Analytics firm Webtrends has released a free iPad app that can be used to track social media buzz generated via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube named Webtrends Today, the company said on Monday.
The app is meant for digital marketers who can use it to measure the engagement of their Facebook communities and individual Facebook pages and also access data, including the number of likes and conversations, as well as graphic visualizations of social impact across demographics and trending comments, said Webtrends in a news release.
Users are also able to track relevant Twitter influence data including number of followers and retweets and the current Klout score, the company said. Klout is a service that monitors online influence of people and brands, and uses data from social networks to calculate the "online influence" of a brand. Users can also track YouTube data including the number of views on each video as well as total channel views and most viewed and recently viewed videos, it added. YouTube videos can be played within the app.
While data is pulled immediately, what is presented is trending data that's a snapshot of the last 24 hours, according to Benjamin Diggles, Webtrend's director of digital marketing in an email. Users who log in and out every hour or so will see changes in the data, he added.
"This is a very basic app," said Brian Blau, research director for consumer technology and markets at Gartner, who tested the application shortly after it became available. The app only offers six or eight pieces of data that can easily be retrieved by logging into the social media services, he added during a phone interview.
"It is also tough to compare this app to others that offer similar services because it is a reporting app only," Blau said, noting that competitors like HootSuite provide similar data but are more functional because they also offer users the opportunity to manage their social media accounts.
Another analyst has a different view. "This is a smart move for Webtrends," said Jeremiah Owyang, an industry analyst at Altimeter Group, who added that the company has been trying to get into social analytics for a while. However, there is a lot of competition in that market, he noted.
Webtrends is competing with products like Salesforce's social media analytics tool Radian 6, as well as Adobe's digital marketing suite Omniture and Google Analytics, Owyang said.
However, Webtrends' social analytics app is unique because it is free, Owyang said. Pricing for enterprise vendors using competitive services could amount to US$100,000 or $200,000 per brand set per year to track, he added. "And if you are a company like Proctor & Gamble you might have to monitor up to 300 brands."
