• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 23, 2009

That’s right, it seems like there may actually be a market for someone to monitor the burgeoning market of social media monitoring firms.

According to Ogivly’s John Bell, there are now “125 monitoring partners” out in the marketplace right now.

“Even if you tried to look through 25 of them you’d want to blow your brains out,” he conceded, suggesting that companies and agencies looking for one narrow their search down to just three of four of them. He also recommends you look for specific criteria, like their ability to do:

Rating and sorting (especially, “machine driven sentiment ratings”)

Reporting

Insights and actions