Businesses, organisations and individuals can find out what’s being said about them on social networks and blogs using StartPR. For businesses and organisations this provides the kind of information that would prove costly using standard market research methods. With StartPR you can type the name of your brand into search and find out all the mentions of it on the main social networks. As it searches all the Web 2.0 hotspots this also takes in blogs. It can also send alerts and daily digests, all the kinds of information press agencies used to be hired to provide.

I tested it out with brands I work with and also my own name, and the results were thorough and surprising. The problem with the main social networks is that there’s too much information to read through, but this kind of search highlights what the buzz is about a brand. For people who have a public presence it helps to see how they are being received, and if they are being written about and promoted.

Basic membership is free, and each search gives a title or whole tweet, together with links to the whole articles. Free accounts allow two projects, 2 users and 256MB of storage space. This could be enough to keep track of one or two activities. Professional accounts start at $19 per month.