Smaller Firms Get Social Media Tracker

London-based uberVU, a realtime social media analytics company, is launching a product to help small and medium businesses and freelancers monitor and measure social media.

The tool is available as a pay-as-you-go, self-service offering. The release follows six months of trials with customers and beta users, and features sentiment analysis and conversation tracking in close to real time, covering Twitter and other social sites, blogs, news sites and forums. The firm says such features are usually found in enterprise class solutions, ie for larger firms.

Company CEO Vladimir Oane says of uberVU: 'We're hoping to level the playing field for small businesses with our new product. Realtime sentiment and social conversation tracking was something that only enterprises could afford. We're bringing this technology to small businesses at an affordable price.'

VP of Marketing Dragos Ilinca explains: 'Recent studies show that social media adoption by small businesses has doubled since last year. Small businesses are starting to realize the potential of social media, but they lack the tools to truly take advantage of it, they're just too expensive and complicated. We're trying to change that.'

The company, which won Seedcamp in 2008 and has funding from VC firm Eden Ventures, will be attending SXSWi 2010 in Austin, Texas as part of the Digital Mission program, sponsored by the UK government.

Web site: www.ubervu.com .