The Web is alive with activity – a tangled weave of people consuming and exchanging information that is personally relevant. Absorbing all this information and interpreting what activity is taking place in the far reaches of the Internet is no easy feat, in the same way trying to listen to, and respond to, everyone in a group of talking people (at the same time) is overwhelming.

And yet, increasingly people use the Internet as an avenue to express themselves and what’s important to them, and when someone, or many someones, tells you what’s important to them, as a person or a business, you normally want to listen. Enter Radian6 – self described as “a complete platform to listen, share, learn, and engage – both inside your company, and with your customers across the entire social web.” From what i’ve seen through their free product demo, this is no empty boast – Radian6 is the most comprehensive package of tools i’ve seen, for detecting, measuring, and responding to the voices of the many Netizens who are talking about your brand and the things that are important to it.

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Tools for measuring Web activity have been around for a while. Alexa, Compete, Quantcast and a number of other sites provide limited statistics on who is visiting your site. Lexicon measures Facebook, Google Analytics summarizes search trends, and Summize was acquired by Twitter for its tweet searching capabilities. Each of these tools provides some interesting tidbits about what people are interested in and talking about, but in and of themselves, they provide limited value, largely because the information only uncovers a small piece of the puzzle, and the tools provide few opportunities to “talk back” and directly engage with the people who are interested in you or your business.

The Radian6 platform is intriguing because it is a complete package of widgetized tools that can be customized to measure the myriad of voices taking place in the Web 2.0 space, in real-time, involving a specific keyword or topic of interest. The tools are provided in a slick, easy to user interface, that tell you who is saying what, whether they’re communicating via a news site, discussion forum, blog, or a microblog like Twitter, and how influential the speaker is by web traffic and readership. This information is collected in a highly customizable format, and can be interpreted in meaningful ways on both a micro level, where the individual has a name, a face, and a voice, or a macro level, that communicates what people are saying en masse. On a micro level, the speaker may be someone who is saying good things about the brand and could be a potential brand evangelist or sponsorship opportunity, or perhaps someone who had a bad customer experience and who is spreading a tale of misfortune, one that could be resolved through direct contact with the customer, before it snowballs. These “ear to the ground” sensors provide a new solution to the age-old problem of metrics on the Web, and further, the Radian6 tools allow you to directly respond to the source of the message without leaving the site – a centralized portal indeed. You can identify the people who are talking about, and have the most impact on your brand, using a weighted “priority” meter that is based in content volume, readership and influence, and a number of other factors, so you decide who you want to listen and respond to.

I was impressed by the platform and am confident this 2006 startup will continue to grow in sophistication and attention… i’m clearly not the only person who thinks so. Here are but a few of many expressions of amazement that people have Tweeted:

antofc Radian6 software is absolutely earth-shattering.

gsherman saw a demo today of @radian6‘s social media monitoring product. Very slick looking. And it has a boatload of features. Cool stuff.

BrettGreene@AmberCadabra I’m blown away – Radian6 drills down to everything you need to mange a brand easily and thoroughly

lbrynleyjonesHad a great play with Radian6 – the social media monitoring tool. Watch your brand realtime, gauge sentiment and respond. Very neat.