NetCurrents (fka NTCS)

[PappaJohn]

The Internet's Top Buzz Cops

full article at: http://www.ecompany.com/articles/mag/print/1,1643,6760,00.html


Bad press, scurrilous rumors, and outright lies have always been a fact of life for corporate-image watchers, but the Internet makes it possible to distribute that grief more quickly and widely than ever before. From the standpoint of any company concerned about its online reputation, the Web is a monitoring nightmare.


"If someone is writing about your company online, you need to know right away," says Larry L. Smith, president of the Institute for Crisis Management, a firm based in Louisville, Ky. "It's extremely important because the Internet is so fast and reaches so many people. The quicker you find out, the quicker you can fix it."


With more than 800 clients, eWatch, the St. Paul, Minn., division of press-release service PR Newswire, is the largest provider of basic monitoring services. Much like a news-clipping service, eWatch searches more than 2,500 Internet publications for a client's name and then e-mails the findings to the company. (Clients can also access these reports on the Web.) In addition, eWatch offers monitoring services that scour mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, competitors' sites, and "hate" sites (as in www.yourcompanysucks.com).


For companies that want even more dirt--along with advice on what to do about it--NetCurrents, in Burlingame, Calif., offers up-to-the-minute reporting and strategic help. Its basic product, called InvestorFacts, allows each client to access a secure site that, in real time, culls message-board postings, articles, and newsgroup commentary relevant to the company. NetCurrents's custom services include providing analysts to hand-check the relevance of mentions, alert clients to important ones, and help them decide whether and how to respond.


But all of this monitoring doesn't come cheap. NetCurrents's InvestorFacts service sells for $3,000 per month, and specialized services can cost as much as $15,000 a month. eWatch charges from $3,600 annually (for basic service and 10 or fewer users) to $137,700 (for all services and up to 100 users). That may seem pricey, but it can be a bargain compared with the perils of finding out too late that a toxic story -- true or otherwise -- has poisoned your company.