As part of a request of a client to investigate the tools that will allow them to actively track & monitor social media, especially the social networks, i have tested this week several online tools available: UberVu (Romanian company), OneRiot, WhosTakin’, etc.
One common problem I found across all of them is the issue of spam. I have found several types of spam, eg. irrelevant content for the searched word(s) or junk content linked to the searched word(s). It made me feel like in the old days when Altavista and Yahoo would have produced the same type of results in their search engines before Google came with the rank-system.
For sure there will be a company that will address this in a very effective way if there is enough financial incentive. However, if in the case of general search engine the market base is huge, those interested in a social media search engine as they are implemented right now is restricted to those that want to track the value of their brand and the ratings of their products & services. Even if social media search will become relevant to a more broader audience, I still see it more fit in the context of a big search engine such as Google or Bing.
There is a Google Social Search but that feature is limited to your “social circle” (friends from Google Chat, Buzz)
