Monitoring your brand online with some easy to use pipes

I've been fiddling with ways to more efficiently manage the online monitoring of brand buzz, and I went back to a tool that's been around for about a year but which has become more useful since it was first launched with some easy(ish) to use new features.

Yahoo Pipes lets you put a load of web feeds, like Google searches, Twitter scans, site feeds, whatever you want to feed into it, and it then produces one stream of information at the other end. And it does this with a cartoon look and feel set of pipes that you drag around the page that connect your searches up.

This is what Yahoo Pipes look like. It's a really easy to use service I think, and if you are one of those people who doesn't have the time or the patience to suscribe to mentions of company names, spokesperson names, cmpaign names, competitor names, etc etc, then this is quicker and lets you have one feed at the end instead of hundreds.

And if Yahoo Pipes looks a bit too complicated still let me know. Keen to hear what other people think.

Comments

[Tom Nixon]

Hi Drew, have you seen the 'social media firehose' yahoo pipes configuration?

http://www.nixonmcinnes.co.uk/2008/04/06/a-simple-yet-powerful-way-to-find-out-where-youre-being-talked-about-in-social-media/

[Jon Silk]

I've been fiddling with Pipes to build my new site. It's great - took me a while to figure out but, once it works, it's strangely satisfying...

[Alex]

Drew,

You asked, so I'll supply... Personally, yes, Yahoo Pipes is straight-forward enough. But, similar to you, I find it "strangely satisfying". It is far from being the silver bullet for the PRO who knows they need to 'get' RSS. but needs something which is fool-proof to operate. The interface [IMHO]. Isn't quite there yet.

[theredrocket]

A good suggestion for an age-old (well internet age) problem - I'll be sure to give it a good look.