Here’s a data point. I was at a Business Marketing Association meeting last week, talking to an agency principal who’s recently started using a social media monitoring service — the name of which I frankly can’t remember (I hadn’t heard of them before anyway). He had also demo’ed one of the bigger players in the space as well, but chose this new vendor because he liked the user interface better. In his mind, the actual data collection were comparable amongst all the vendors he looked at.

His need was not focused on real-time data — he needed brand-related data, which any of the vendors have, some of it real time, some not, some more robust and complete, some with more sources available.
What I wonder, from this very unscientific singular data point: Are measurement and social media monitoring services losing differentiation? Are they all delivering the same promise, or is it time for these folks to really work on that differentiation among the brands?

Certainly, there are differences — in everything from data quality to the analytics. But, are the vendors in this space doing a good job of letting the market know their differences? Do they need to at this point, or is the market big enough for continuing generic explanations of what social media monitoring or listening services offer?