In doing my own research on the use of “meme trackers” as a lead for spotting emerging business trends for my forthcoming book, I came across this very good review of 8 of these, from the blog franticindustries, and thought it was worth passing along.

So far I’ve been a little disappointed in the actual capability of some of even the leading meme trackers as an effective solution to truly filter chatter and noise on the Net to identify significant trends–

…I’ll report back here shortly if I do find one that stands out from the rest, but I’m starting to conclude that social media sites like these still rely too much on technology (obviously) as the answer, and so persons who rely on meme trackers and other automated Net based solutions for finding “buzz” may neglect the softer but still much more critical trend tracking tasks. That is : paying close attention and applying our own insights and mindfulness towards a wide range of rich information resources (both on and off the Web) and immersing ourselves experientially in what we want to learn about more deeply….again, more to come….