Social Media Search Tools

Social Media is emerging as a key tool for online communication and knowledge accumulation. Each month, 30 billion pieces of content are generated and shared on Facebook. On Twitter, over 1 billion messages are posted each week. In one day, over 762,000 thousand new posts and 803,000 comments are posted on WordPress. And, every minute, over 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.

Being able to monitor and mine this wealth of accumulated content has become critical for business and legal purposes. For the use of our clients and colleagues, we have developed a non-comprehensive list of online tools that you may find useful in monitoring and mining content accumulated on social media platforms and on the Internet, generally.

Free Social Media Search Tools:

• Addict-o-matic - Aggregates RSS feeds based on specific search terms, searching across blogs, Twitter, Digg, Flickr and more
• Boardreader.com?- Enables users to search multiple message boards and forums
• Folowen?- Searches most of the top social networking sites.
• Google Alerts - Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries.
• IceRocket?- Monitor Twitter, blogs, web, news, images and more. Includes the ability to bookmark your search results for later reference.
• Omgili.com - Focuses on "many to many" user-generated content
• SamePoint?- Social media search tool
• SocialMention?- Includes daily email alerts and real time monitoring of search terms on 85+ social media sites
• Twazzup?- Twitter-focused monitoring tool
• Tweetbeep?- Similar to Google Alerts, but for Twitter
• Twitter Advanced Search - Use simple Boolean logic (true or false conditions) to search Twitter feeds

Paid Social Media Search:

• BrandsEye?- Online reputation management tool to monitor how a brand is perceived
• Buzztrend?- An online reputation management tool
• Converseon?- International social media strategy and analytics
• CI:Insight?- Social media research and text mining platform from Collective Intellect
• Radian6?- Social media monitoring and engagement platform
• Trackur?- Social media monitoring of reputation, news mentions, PR campaigns
• Visible Technologies?- Social media monitoring, analytics and engagement
• Wink People Search?- Search for people across several social sites

Business social media tools:

• Biz-nik?- An online networking community for independent business people (paid)
• Cofoundr?- A community for entrepreneurs, programmers, designers, investors and others involved with starting new ventures (paid)
• Entrepreneur Connect?- A community for entrepreneurs (free)
• Jigsaw?- Business directory designed to facilitate direct contact with decision-makers (free and paid features)
• Klout?- Uses data from social networks to measure an individual's reach and influence (free and paid)
• LinkedIn?- The most popular business social network
• Networking for Professionals?- A business network for professionals (paid)
• PerfectBusiness - A network of entrepreneurs, investors and business experts. (free)
• Plaxo?- A leading online address book (free and paid features)
• Ryze?- Business-oriented networking site (free and paid features)
• Upspring?- A social networking platform for business promotion (paid)
• Ziggs?- Comprehensive online personal branding and networking for professionals (free)

Useful General Internet Search Tools:

• Bing?- Microsoft's search engine
• Google?- Use advanced Google techniques for better results
• Intelius?- Person search and reverse phone lookup tool
• Pipl - Aggregates information about a person across multiple search engines
• Peoplefinder?- Find people and phone numbers, including reverse phone search
• Spokeo?- Organizes vast quantities of personal information
• Switchboard?- Person and business finder
• ZabaSearch?- Find home address(es) & phone number
• Zoominfo?- Search for employment results
• 411.com?- Free directory assistance, reverse address, reverse phone