[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]
Since I care quite a bit about Mashable’s brand and reputation, one of the tools I keep open continually in my browser is Tweetscan, so I can monitor what people on Twitter are saying about us. The site’s spartan interface seems to work pretty well – I can quickly see which articles people are linking to, their reactions to our stories, or, conversations they are having with Pete through our Twitter account. It's also an alert system for finding out when we've made a typo or there is a broken link ;)
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]Qualitatively, I can also say that I'm far from alone in using Tweetscan in this way - I've received near immediate emails from numerous companies when someone on staff says something the least bit negative about their brand on Twitter. Thus, while perhaps not a huge business in their own right, Twitter search tools like Tweetscan are becoming an important piece of brand management (or, at least a useful tool for stalking or feeding your ego).
However, Tweetscan is far from a complete tool, and Summize, the opinion search engine, is trying to give them a run for their money with a prettier and more feature-rich tool (available here). Most noticeably, Summize has a shiny design, versus the rather drab Tweetscan. Not a huge deal, but given the choice of two services that do essentially the same thing, the superficial in me goes for the one that looks best. Moving onto more important issues, some additional features that Summize offers include language filtering, keyword search filters, and a “reply” link with every message in the search results.
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]