Just a bit ago, I wrote a post covering my favorite tools for monitoring conversations on Twitter.

I’d like to add one more to the bunch. Recently launched Summize is similar to TweetScan, but also unique in its capabilities and in turn, changes how we may view Twitter search. At the very minimum, it’s a basic search tool that operates similar to how you would naturally search in Yahoo or Google. Both tools bring Twitter alive and expose the layers of conversations taking place that matter to your personal life, your professional brand or the companies/products you may represent.

Developed by Summize Labs, Summize’s mission is to search and discover the topics and attitudes expressed within online conversations.

Summize, provides clean, simple search interface that can be expanded to include more advanced options, similar to Google’s home page, while TweetScan is more of the Yahoo of Twitter search.

For those who are looking for specific content along with emotion, context, location, traffic, or embedded links etc., Summize provides a series of “search operators” to effectively and quickly navigate through the ever-evolving world of micro conversations.

Each search query offers an RSS feed to automatically search and monitor the results as well as the ability to send your results as a Tweet.

The only downside to Summize is that I haven’t noticed an auto-refresh option. It does alert you as new results are found, but you need to manually force it to display them.

Summize Labs is also currently experimenting with a Realtime Twitter Sentiment search tool that locates up-to-the-second tweets about your topic and automatically analyzes and displays the attitudes expressed in those tweets.

All-in-all, I find that I’m using Summize to monitor the conversations that pertain to the companies I represent in order to determine not only context and sentiment, but also the conversations that require our participation.

Companies such as JetBlue, Zappos, H&R; Block, Southwest and Dell are already actively listening and participating in conversations on Twitter and throughout the socialmediasphere. They represent a new era of outbound customer service-focused companies seeking to engage the very people who could in turn further evangelize their experiences. Tools such as Summize only help them, and you, identify the conversations that could benefit from personable, informative, and helpful outreach from you or someone within your organization. Otherwise, you leave it up to those who may or may not be qualified to represent your brand to potential stakeholders. And, even worse, you leave the door open to your competition to interject and earn a position of influence.

Here are the conversations taking place on Twitter related to Summize and the related sentiment (note: type summize and then search for sentiment).

Other relevant stories on PR 2.0:
– PR 2.0 = The Evolution of PR, Nothing Less, Nothing More
– The Value of Online Conversations
– Distributed Conversations and Fragmented Attention
– The Art of Listening and Engagement
– The Social Media Manifesto
– Will the Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up

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