Synthesio is releasing a new social media engagement platform called Unity that will act as an addition to the monitoring solution it already provides. But in such a saturated market, what does this offer companies looking to interact with consumers online?

As the name suggests, Unity brings together the multitude of social media platforms into one manageable stream – enabling companies to engage more effectively with consumers via these platforms in real-time. It is built on top of, though not fully integrated, with Synthesio’s monitoring dashboard.

Whereas the monitoring dashboard tracks and analyses sentiment of brand-related conversation on blogs, social media, forums and review sites, Unity harvests, categorises and routes conversations to relevant departments within a company, allowing for easy real-time response. Unity is also able to be integrated with companies own CRM platforms, such as Salesforce.

Several engagement solutions have come out onto the market lately. IBM and Eptica have their own platforms, and Salesforce recently acquired and is integrating Radian6 into its own offering. Loic Moisand, CEO and co-founder of Synthesio, believes convergence will become increasingly commonplace in the future.

“Synthesio started off as a company that offered a listening solution,” Moisand explained. “Others specialised in analysing data or in providing engagement platforms. Going forward, the eventual winners will be those companies that can offer listening, analysis and engagement in an integrated platform.”

Usability is certainly a strong-point of Unity, with Synthesio tailoring its solution to suit individual clients needs. Unity facilitates easier interaction not only across social media platforms but internally, too, between different departments. Graphics, currently in Flash, are being upgraded to HTML 5, allowing for easy export of data visualisations to iPhones and iPads, and giving Synthesio a jump on rivals such as Radian6.

Were one to pick a weakness in Synthesio’s offering, it is that the monitoring dashboard and Unity platform are not yet fully integrated, although Moisand says this is the aim going forward. Clients are advised first to listen then engage based on analysis of that listening but, as was pointed out in the session, it would be useful to be able to see the impact of your engagement on sentiment in real-time. Faster and more integrated feedback loops mean increased responsiveness to reputation challenges online.

The difficulty with this of course is the human element. Synthesio’s monitoring dashboard uses human analysis to track sentiment. In fact, this is arguably its strongest feature – algorithms are incapable of detecting nuances in interaction online such as sarcasm. Reliance on algorithmic sentiment, even if it allowed for real-time integration between listening and engagement, might be a weaker overall solution. It will be interesting to see how Synthesio and others tackle this problem going forward.

Tags: hugh jordan, Loic Moisand, social mdia engagement, social media monitoring, Synthesio, Unity