Jive Unveils Free Social Media Monitoring Tool

10 Cool Social Media Monitoring Tools

Jive Software is democratizing social media monitoring and engagement for its enterprise social networking customers.

Social media monitoring has been getting a lot of attention since Salesforce.com acquired Radian6 last spring, but, most companies make social media monitoring tools available to only a very small number of people, Jive chief marketing officer John Rizzo said. "This is something that has been very expensive, very hard to use, et cetera, and we saw an opportunity here to take advantage of some of the investments we've been making in Big Data and monitoring."

As part of an upgrade to Jive social media engagement, Jive is offering a free tool, called Fathom, as well as a high-end one, Fathom Pro, which is priced at $49 per user per month. The free version imposes some limits, such as three saved searches per account, versus unlimited searches with the Pro version. Fathom Pro also provides more sophisticated analytics, such as automated sentiment analysis for the content of posts, and engagement tools for replying, retweeting, and otherwise responding to social media. On the other hand, the free Fathom will make basic social media analytics and tracking available to more people within a company.

Adam Mertz, senior product marketing manager at Jive, noted that adding more sophisticated features also makes a product more difficult to use, so the free version of Fathom may be a better match for what most employees who aren't professional analysts need anyway.

[Learn more about Salesforce.com's social aspirations. Read Salesforce.com Steps Past CRM, Into Social Marketing.]

Both versions will be offered through the Jive Apps Market on the Jive 5 platform. Users who add the app to their accounts will be able to monitor activity on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs through a Web-based dashboard, and they will also be able to share what they've learned with other employees through Jive.

Jive Fathom is not related to MotiveQuest's Fathom Research social media analytics service.

Jive is one of the leaders in software and services for companies to use social collaboration internally and to connect with their customers. Since Jive's initial public offering last week, its stock has continued trading at about $15 a share, giving the company a market valuation of more than $800 million.

Follow David F. Carr on Twitter @davidfcarr. The BrainYard is @thebyard

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