There was a flurry of activity in the social media analytics world last week. Both Adobe and Hootsuite have announced the launch of tools that will allow users to track activity on the major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We can only hope each is using their own tools for good! The idea of real-time information is giving marketing groups around the water cooler goose bumps. These tools will continue to develop over time and the consumers of the data will have a continuously improved view of social media metrics and the thoughts, comments and emotions of customers.

This past week Adobe gave a sneak peek of its new social analytics tool to 2,000 digital marketers and publishers at a summit in Salt Lake City. The new tool will be made available to a limited number of customers during a test phase starting in April and final rollout is expected in July.

The new release of Adobe’s SiteAnalytics offers real-time segmentation capabilities, allowing a user to run a report in real time filtered by segments such as Facebook users, mobile users or visitors to a Web site that made purchases. Adobe’s updated SiteCatalyst is easier to use, thanks to a new user interface and improved search functionality for finding specific reports without sorting through the menu system.

Crowd Factory is excited about the Q3 launch of Adobe’s SiteAnalytics platform. From our view these tools are complementary in at least four ways to our existing Social Campaign application, including:

1. Having the ability to enable content to be socialized &shared out across the web

2. Tracking capabilities of what happens to that content and identify who is spreading the news

3. Together we can tie that spread to the activity and person that started

4. Finally, we can optimize content that is presented on a site dynamically based on who the user is that is visiting.

From retail, to healthcare, to news and beyond the need for understanding the metrics of social media conversations are growing – fast. Companies like HBO want to better understand how teenagers feel about the latest True Blood episode just as much as CNN wants to follow who is sharing video, tweets, updates and critical news of survivors an earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

In a world where data is growing at exponential rates, without understanding the data, it might as well be written in invisible ink. Crowd Factory is dedicated to providing our customers with the fastest, easiest to use and the most dynamics views of social information. If you would like to join the Crowd, let us know!