A lot of what is said in this post is right on the money. Listening is the future, but you need to take it futher than that. Identifying trends amongst your data, seeing what works and what doesn't work and determining your ROI for whatever you are trying to gauge(gains in sales, followers, facebook friends, etc.) is where the real value is going to lie.

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I'm a software developer at a social media metrics startup, SWIX ( http://www.swixhq.com ), our product will be heading for our initial launch very soon. Our focus is on helping social media marketers or individuals track social media campaigns and determine their ROI. If you want to be notified when it launches or have any questions feel free to email me (my email is in my profile)

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As a good friend of mgrouchy and someone who has been following SWIX from the outside, I can vouch for this. I've seen the service itself during various phases of its development, and it is looking amazing.

Definitely check it out and stay tuned for the beta.

Is it just me, or are these insights superficial? If "social media" is a conversation, doesn't it already imply that listening is part of the process? Using social media for its intended purpose is different than retweeting Guy Kawasaki just because other people are doing it.

I don't want to disparage anyone's hard work in this space, but I wonder if the person most interested in "social media monitoring tools" might be the sort of person who hires a ghost blogger/tweeter because he/she is too busy to blog or tweet.

Not exactly related, but it really annoys me when people have twitter accounts but don't respond to @mentions.