Finally there's now a way for all of us to search message boards, not just professionals who license the high-end tools. BoardTracker.com is tracking 16 million conversation threads in 26,000+ forums. They aggregate content into tag clouds too.
While these numbers are very small, I still think it's smart for these guys to be focusing on forums. There's plenty of value here and they're filling a void in the market. Take health, for example. Most of the conversation around health takes place in forums, not blogs - at least right now. I would love to see more innovation in this area of conversation monitoring. Better yet, they should find a way to aggregate blog comments too. Wither not the forum. (via del.icio.us/for/steverubel)
