With the launch of BlogScape, it looks like respected search engine optimization experts SEOMoz are entering the competitive world of social media monitoring (SEOMoz.org was one of my "Blogs That You Should Be Reading But Probably Aren't).
While it isn't exactly a stand alone product, as the cost of paying for it would also include a whole bunch of other SEOMoz products and services, it still looks like an incredibly strong offering in terms of its ability to analyze traffic.
Where I think it lacks is in its reach - from the description, it appears to be only monitoring 10 million RSS feeds from what they term "the fast-moving web." Compare this to Technorati who, according to their last "State of the Blogosphere," tracks 133 million blogs.
The good news is that Blogscape assigns a "Blogrank" to the blogs it tracks. From the description, it sounds like this will act similarly to Technorati's Authority number, and will be an interesting way to evaluate the importance and relevance of a particular blog.
One of the main faces of SEOMoz, Rand Fishkin, chimes in on the comments section of the post saying that he "honestly think this is as good and in some ways better than GG Blogsearch, Technorati, etc. and the graphing is clearly way more advanced."
That's quite a bold statement. However, the tools he is comparing it to are free tools. Unless I'm mistaken, SEOMoz's Blogscape is only available to PRO members of their site, and membership ranges between $79-$229 a month.
I'd still be interested in checking it out. Maybe I'll ask for an SEOMoz PRO member ship for my birthday or something.
-Parker