Buzzmetrics today announced they have purchased Intelliseek and sold a majority stake in the new company to Nielsen, which is owned by VNU. The new company, called Nielsen Buzzmetrics, will be headquartered here in New York. Dizzy yet?
BuzzMetrics and Intelliseek have lead the way with high-end tools for tracking and analyzing consumer-generated word-of-mouth in blogs, message boards and review sites. Now that they are joined at the hip with Nielsen I think we'll see new ways to measure the impact of the Long Tail. And my bet is they will look nothing like the methods of the past that relied on assessing traffic and unique users.
Nielsen, like other research companies that track and measure the media, was faced with a vexing issue. Namely: How do you evolve when the very media ecosystem on which you built your business is eroding? The answer is to acquire smart thinkers who have figured out ways to analyze, measure and live in a world where the Long Tail dominates.
The takeaway here is that it's very hard to build knowledge about the world of consumer generated media if you're not culturally built for it. It's much easier and faster to buy this knowledge, rather than building it on your own. Consumer generated media simply moves too fast.
I think we'll see the same shifts occur in both the PR and advertising agency worlds. These business also were built around big media. It's easier to buy this knowledge - either by recruiting top talent or by acquiring agencies outright that are experienced in conversational marketing - than it is to build this capability from the ground up. And no, CooperKatz is not for sale.
Technorati Tags: BuzzMetrics, Intelliseek, Media, Metrics, Nielsen, Data, WOM, wordofmouth, CGM, consumergeneratedmedia.
