I just got a private tour of BlogScope from Dr Nick Koudas of the University of Toronto. This is his project he’s been working on with a handful of brilliant students, and it’s purpose is to measure social media.

I’ve seen these types of tools before, from Nielsen Buzz Metrics and others, and it looks like it could be a robust engine as he gets more data in and starts to clean and organize.

What does he measure? In this demo, he was measuring blogspot (google blogs) data, he could measure velocity and volume (and it was graphed) sentiment (by looking for negative adjectives or descriptions) and also scraping profile data of the blogger (persona), and then creating some type of authority index based upon incoming links, frequently of posting, and other data.

Why is social media measurement important? With the brands being so decentralized, marketers now know that marketing has shifted off two domains –the scope is the whole web. Individuals are influenced by word of mouth and discussions, so social media measurement is tied to the holy grail of marketing –ROI.

The most interesting thing about BlogScope is that it’s feature set is available for free, so if you work for Nielsen, Cymfony, Factiva or others, (see this list) you should pay attention.

Nick is seeking Venture Funding, so if you want an introduction to him, please email me (see top right column)

I’ve added Blogscope to the list of companies that measure social media.