Summize.com Falls Short of Past Hype

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By Matt Clark

It’s not easy to cultivate brand equity in a world where candid customer feedback and conversations increasingly dominate news and search results around products. But a proven method of success is using social media to embrace customer engagement. But how do you track everything?

Summize.com allows PR and Marketing pros to search attitudes expressed towards their brand within online conversations.

Summize currently tracks real-time conversations only on Twitter, allowing you to see who is saying what about your brand at any given moment. This could be a useful tool, but with millions of tweets a day, you need to be consistently monitoring Summize. In theory, PR and Marketing pros can search their brand by name and see what people are saying and look at how to adjust their message and respond to complaints.
So let’s say I’m head of marketing at Google (HA!) and I want to see the reaction to Google Site after the uproar over the Apps Engine. I just go to Summize and search “Google Site” and get a list of recent Tweets.

Marketers need to manage their brand’s identity within online communities. Often, these people have a strong voice among brand faithful. It’s the idea of marketing to, and engaging, the Brand Us. For non-social media and digital marketing specialists, it’s too hard to manage all online communities out there, but you can at least use Summize to follow Twitter.

I wouldn’t get hooked on Summize as this can’t be a sustainable business model. I’m amazed Twitter doesn’t have this already. The guys at Summize probably know this and have a few other products rolling out in Summize Labs. TechCrunch reviewed the site in December and gave it rave reviews, but I don’t know why. Summize Labs is for prototypes that harness conversations within blogs and reviews. Again, IN THEORY, this will spider the Internet and let you know what blogs and communities are saying about you.

When you visit Summize Labs, Realtime Sentiment is the only tool you can use. Realtime Sentiment analyzes attitudes expressed. Since it’s in Lab phase I used their suggested word and searched “iPhone.” Realtime Sentiment came back and said the overall sentiment on the iPhone was bad. I thought that was a little odd so I tried something I thought would be bad…“Osama Bin Laden”.

THE OVERALL TWITTER SENTIMENT REGARDING OSAMA BIN LADEN WAS GREAT?!?!?!?!

Okay, I understand it’s in the “labs,” but I don’t know how it survived TechCrunch.

PR and Marketing professionals need help to stay on top of online communities. There is just too much out there to keep track of. Summize is a cool idea but its just not there yet. Perhaps Satisfaction has possibilities…