Analyzing Twitter: variety of metrics, no clear standout

Services’ strengths offset by weaknesses—among them an inability to put it all together

So you want to measure Twitter? The good news is that you have several online Twitter profile analysis/ranking services to choose from. The bad news is that none of them offers all the metrics you really need or want.

Typically you need human readers to measure Twitter’s impact accurately, because they are the only way to understand the language. Yet having human eyes read and rate every tweet takes a lot of time and money. For fast and free measurement, online profile analysis tools are the way to go.

Still, automated analysis has accuracy problems, especially when it comes to the subtle language involved in measuring sentiment (see “5 Twitter Sentiment Analyzers Reviewed”). If someone devises a way to combine all the tools reviewed below, then we might have something really useful. Until then, we’ve weighed the pros and cons of each to help you make the best decision.