Sysomos just launched the next version of Heartbeat, the company's social media monitoring tool. Highlights of Heartbeat 2.0 include a redesigned user interface and Facebook integration. Sysomos' customers can now monitor public conversations on Facebook and manage their Facebook Pages right from within Heartbeat. The Facebook integration tracks user activity, top keywords and top fans on Facebook pages.
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Focus on Social Media Workflow
Heartbeat does not restrict the number of users per account. This is a good thing, given that one of Heartbeat's best features is its ability to assign tasks and follow-ups to other team members. Sysomos calls this the 'engagement stream' and while Heartbeat's ability to monitor social media streams is impressive, most of the workflow in an enterprise setting happens through these engagement streams.
Facebook Integration
As Sysomos's Nilesh Bansal told us earlier today, the company's customers really wanted to manage their Facebook accounts through Heartbeat. Even though it takes a bit to set up - and even though Facebook still doesn't make a lot of its data public - the integration actually turns out to be quite interesting and gives users a chance to manage their social media accounts in one place.
The Facebook integration shows a sentiment meter, as well as a tree graph with the most often used keywords in these postings. Even though Facebook doesn't offer a lot of public data yet, Bansal told us that the company tries to use whatever data it can get.
It is important to note that Heartbeat is not just a Twitter and Facebook tool. Sysomos also tracks blogs and forum postings. One of the most interesting aspects of Heartbeat is that it can find the most influential bloggers and Twitter users that write about your company (or competitors). Heartbeat also offers sentiment analysis and does a surprisingly good job at keeping spam tweets and blogs out of its index.
MAP: Social Media Analytics
Sysomos also offers MAP, the company's social media analytics tool. While Hearbeat is geared towards end-users in the enterprise, MAP is a fully-featured analytics tool. With this power, however, also comes a steep learning curve. MAP also doesn't feature any of Heartbeat's social media workflow features. We took a close look at MAP in an earlier review. Sysomos also offers a very helpful chart that compares the features of MAP and Heartbeat.
Pricing
With an entry-level price of $500 per month, Heartbeat is clearly not a consumer product. Most of Sysomos' customers buy packages that also include access to MAP and the company creates custom quotes for these customers. We have heard, however, that Sysomos plans to offer a free or less costly product for small businesses and consumers in the future.
