What it is: Launched on April 15, 2008, Facebook Lexicon is a neat tool that allows users to follow language trends across Facebook’s public and semi-public forums or walls. Similar to Google Trends, it offers users the ability to track the popularity of different words or phrases.

What it does: In short, Facebook Lexicon counts the occurrences of words and phrases on profile, group and event walls over a period of time — as far back as 2 years — while creating a trend graph in the process. Simply enter your search terms (up to five) and witness the discussion trends users engage in on a daily basis. A new version of this mapping tool offers the following functions:

Dashboard: provide quick metrics, like number of posters, percentage of posters, number of posts, and user demographics all in one screen

Demographics: breaks down who is discussing a given topic by age, gender, and country. Percentage of Posters shows the percentage of posters in each demographic that mentioned the topic each day.

Associations: Similar to a tag cloud, the “associations” function shows terms that frequently show up in posts with the topics on X and Y axes. For example, the terms “Red Sox” and “Yankees” will frequently occur in posts about “baseball.”

Sentiment: shows the percentage of posts that are positive vs. negative about the topic

Pulse: shows keywords that frequently occur in the profiles of users who mentioned the topic, ranked by how many times the keyword occurs and how closely associated the keyword is with the topic

Maps: shows where people are talking about the topic, with darker colors indicating more mentions of a specific topic per day

What it is good for: In an industry that’s rapidly adopting web 2.0 applications in branding strategies, Facebook Lexicon offers communications professionals the ability to dissect user data from the world’s most popular social networking site.

By pulling data from the wealth of Facebook discussions, Lexicon offers users an insight of what Facebook addicts are talking about. This can be a powerful tool for industry professionals who want to gauge coverage of their product, or that of a competitor, among users.

For instance, the graph below illustrates the buzz generated by both Duke and UNC. As one can see, Duke’s presence on Facebook is slightly higher than that of their tobacco road rival. It is also evident that the majority of online discussions take place during March. I wonder why?

Moving Forward: Overall, Facebook Lexicon has the POTENTIAL to be a must-have for all agencies serious about social media metric tools, but not just yet.

Although Facebook Lexicon does do a great job implementing Google Trend properties into the social networking site, it still has some flaws—all dealing with lack of data. Depending on your search term, you could receive a gold mind of information or the dreaded “There is no data for your query. Please try another term.”

According to Facebook, “A term will only be displayed if there have been sufficient mentions of the term to display results. If a term doesn’t show up in the graph, or if there is a gap, it doesn’t mean that no one mentioned it; it means that not enough people mentioned that term for it to exceed the threshold.”

Another drawback to this nifty tool is that all the neat functions listed above (dashboard, demographic, sentiment, etc.) are still under development. Users can preview this new version by searching one of the 17 predetermined search terms listed by Facebook, but it ends there.

On a comforting note, Facebook Lexicon does go out of its way to protect user privacy by stating that “The system strips out all personally identifiable information so that there is no way to track a mention back to a specific person. No human at Facebook ever reads these Wall posts, and Lexicon does not look at personal messages, invitations or any other private user-to-user communications.”

Final thought: Wall discussions are read by tens, hundreds or even thousands of people (depending on your friends list) and in an industry rapidly merging with social media, keeping track of user sentiment across all web 2.0 properties is a must. Although the new Facebook Lexicon is still under development, go ahead and play around with the current version; you might be surprised at what discussion trends you find about your company!

Today is the first in a series of “social media Monday” posts.  In these posts we are taking stock of the social media tools — some fee-based but many of them free — that we use in developing social media strategies and analyzing social media developments.

We start with Compete.com, a measurement tool that’s growing in popularity not only because of its versatility but also because — it is free!  Our own Matt Lancos provides this review.  Thoughts and comments can be given here but feel free to contact Matt directly at mlancos@brodeur.com if you’re looking for more info or would like to discuss.

What it is: Compete.com calls itself a one-stop-shop for website analytics. Their Site Profile provides multiple measurement tools to help qualify nearly any website, but the go-to feature has to be the site traffic history.

What it does: View the monthly traffic numbers of up to five different websites on a color-coded line graph. The graph can display the data from the past 3, 6 or 12 months. Below the graph, in addition to all the raw data, Compete provides five more helpful pieces of information:

Monthly and Yearly Change: Displays website growth or decline in terms of a percentage

Top Search Terms: Displays what people are searching for to get to that site

Referral Sites: The top 5 websites that people visit before that site

Destination Sites: The top 5 websites that people visit after that site

Top Tags:  The tags most associated with that site. You even have the ability to add tags you deem appropriate.

When not comparing sites, a single profile includes a site description, total number of visits and a rank based on unique visitors.

What it is good for:  Compete offers a straight-forward way to qualify a website. If your client receives coverage online, you can immediately see the potential reach of the story.

The historical data is also worth noting. Check out the graph above to the see the point in December 2008 when Facebook took over MySpace as the top dog of social networking.

In a real-life example, as part of a past campaign we reached out to the increasingly influential Mommy Bloggers. As part of our analysis we used  Compete’s traffic data as one of the factors in prioritizing Mommy Blogger outreach.

Moving Forward: Overall, Compete is a great weapon to have in your measurement arsenal. After signup, the service is completely free*! But just how accurate is this information? According to Compete, the data is based on a diverse sample of 2 million people that is “statistically normalized and projected to represent the size and demographic composition of the total active U.S. Internet population.”

As I said earlier, the site traffic history is their one go-to feature. The other tools are really just complementary features to the traffic data. The referral and destination site tool can sometimes help with audience analysis and competing websites, but most of the time they end up being Google, Yahoo and Digg.com.

The Compete Blog is also worth a read. It specializes in people’s internet behavior based on all of Compete’s research tools. Many of these stories are actually pretty fun, including one about competing fast food pizza chains.

And if you’re the on-the-go type, make sure to download the Compete toolbar. Normally I am VERY exclusive when it comes to toolbars, but this one is definitely worthy of my browser. Whenever you’re at a site, click on ‘Profile’ to get unique monthly visitors, site rank and an adorable mini-version of the historic traffic data graph. And even if clicking one button is too much work for you, the unique monthly visitor data and site rank appears automatically in the bottom right corner of your browser.

Final thought: Come for the traffic data, stay for the blog and leave with the toolbar.

*Compete does offer a “PRO” version for a monthly fee, with provides additional features such as industry category profiles, expanded data and comprehensive search analytics. The Brodeur Blog did not address these features.

The great thing about being a host is that you typically don’t need to know a whole lot … just be able to make good introductions.  That’s likely why John Brodeur selected me to be the host of a panel on measurement last Friday at a meeting of the Brodeur Partners Advisory Board.  It was a terrific discussion on one of the most talked about subject in social media:  measurement.

First to take the floor was Javier Escobedo of Microsoft.  Javier reminded us that in measurement we shouldn’t think small — not 70, not 700, not 7,000 — but big, like 7 million.  Javier ran through a flurry of statistics not the least of which was the number of people in the network he is responsible for (btw, it was a lot!).  Javier’s other main point:  not reinventing things.  He noted that we’ve already plenty of tools to measure things with.  The trick is tying them together in a meaningful way.

Then there was Jere Doyle of Prospectiv.  Jere went through a series of different measures that he uses at Prosectiv to track their online marketing campaigns.  He predicted much more standardization moving forward as well as more behavioral and attitudinal measures being incorporated into campaigns.  He also suggested growth in the emerging field of crowd metrics.

Speaking of crowds, it was the relationships among those crowds that Eric Wheeler of 33Across focused on.  Eric walked everyone through his company’s approach that focuses on the nature of people relationships and networks on the Internet.  Using some interesting real-time demos he showed us how they look at intensity, frequency, and other elements in peoples online networks and then use those findings to enter into targeted, meaningful conversations.

Joshua Wachs of EchoDitto looked at measurement through the lens of the online agency.  EchoDitto does a considerable amount of online community development both for the “for cause” community as well as the corporate community.  Joshua reminded everyone that metrics vary significantly based on client and campaign.  Rather than fit clients into a metrics box it is best to create metrics specific to the campaign.  Joshua also walked us through several measurement tools that looked VERY cool but were of questionable practical value (a common problem).

Finally there was Mike Lewis from Awareness.  Mike’s pitch was integrated measurement.  His starting point was that every marketer has a lot of options.  He or she shouldn’t be limited by what’s “hot” (i.e. social media) but should simply focus on what works.  As an extension of that, Mike went through a handful of examples where measurement was applied across platforms, across channels, online and offline.

It was a great session.

We’re working on a more detailed summary but wanted to pass this along while fresh on my mind.

I was preparing for a series of presentations and panel discussions on the topic of social media measurement and decided to put together a list.  Specifically, I was wondering what a list would look like of different people, places and things that measures stuff on the Internet — some for money and others for free — some serious and others, well, let’s just say “playful.”

Below is what we came up with … a nudge over three score.

I owe a lot of the initial research to Linda Daichendt of Strategic Growth Concepts and Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group.  Thanks to them and hats off to Matt Lancos and Marco Carranza-Walter for stitching their lists together and peppering them with some others.

So here’s my agreement with you.

From our (Brodeur’s) side, we’re going to start a series on the Brodeur Open Blog profiling, reviewing, and otherwise giving our take on as many of these measurement tools as possible.

What do we ask of you?  Simple.  I know we’re missing something.  Probably a lot of something.  If you know of some measurement thing or service that is neat, cool, interesting, or just fun, sent it along to us.  We’ll update the list to include it and put it in the calendar for our profile series.

Until then, enjoy the list …

• Addictomatic
• Alexa
• Attentio
• Bit.ly
• Biz360
• Blogpulse
• BlogScope, by University of Toronto
• Boardreader
• Boardtracker
• BrandIntel
• Buzzlogic
• Buzzmonitor
• Cli.gs
• Collective Intellect
• Compete.com
• Converseon
• CustomScoop
• Cymfony
• Del.ici.ous
• Facebook lexicon
• Factiva
• Google Alerts
• Google Insights
• Google Trends
• Howsociable
• Ice Rocket
• Integrasco
• Kaava
• KDPaine & Partners
• Lotame
• MediaMiser
• Millward Brown Precis
• Nielsen BuzzMetrics
• Newsflashr
• Onalytica
• Pythia Analytics
• Quantcast.com
• Quarkbase
• Radian6
• Relevant Noise
• RepuTrace by CoreX Technologies
• SentimentMetrics
• Socialmention
• Sphere
• Sports Media Challenge
• Summize
• Technorati
• TrackUr
• Trendpedia
• Twellow
• Twingly
• Twist Graph
• Twitter Grader
• Twitturly
• Gen Y Tribe
• Unica
• Visible Technologies (TruCast)
• Wavemetrix
• Website Grader
• Xinu
• Yahoo Pipes
• yExplore

With the recent release of Google’s Chrome browser, most web developers I know had the same reaction: “Oh (insert expletive).”

I feel your pain. The majority of books on my shelves and favorite places I have online consist of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) hacks so the pages I build in Internet Exloperer 7 (IE7), Safari and Firefox maintain a desired layout.  Thankfully, Chrome was built using WebKit, a do-it-yourself open-source browser. If you want a preview of how your CSS will compile, simply view your webpage in Safari. Yup, Safari uses WebKit too.

As a web developer, I’m constantly trying to keep up to speed with new or updated web technologies. In fact, sometimes releases are so frequent that I feel keeping up to speed is ALL I do. I know I’m not alone. The fact of the matter is we work so hard to be as innovative and current as possible that we may be creating usability issues for our most valuable clients or customers.

At Brodeur, we’ve built information-based blogs with a purpose to raise awareness of various topics and establish a sophisticated dialogue with visitors. About 80% of our visitors use either IE or Firefox. More than 16% of our visitors use a browser that is IE6 or older. Up until December of 2007, more than 55% of all businesses were still running on IE6, and up until this Summer, Windows XP SP2 was still on the market with IE6 as a default browser.

Think about your users. Think about your target audience.  Think about the technologies they use.

It’s a tough task. In his book Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions, Tim Ash explains that our most intelectual visitors may have JavaScript disabled for security purposes, allowing for things like inaccurate or empty form submissions. Have you ever been so caught up in the presentation of your site that you forgot about creating an RSS feed?  You may have just created a Meatball Sundae, omitting the opinion leaders most important to your online strategy.

Have you been mindful of your user’s technologies? When was the last time you tested your website for IE6? Stop worrying about how your JavaScript-fired popups like facebox/lightbox look on Playstation 3 and start testing in the technologies reported used.