Social Media Search & Monitoring

Trying keep up with social networks and media outlets to perform routine brand protection, media monitoring, and protective intelligence tasks can be overwhelming. Two new services have come across our radar in recent weeks and are worth mentioning. YackTrack provides search capabilities for references and comments to a specific URL (post, page, etc.) as well as a keyword search (chatter) across multiple social networks. The service could be particularly valuable when attempting to track reactions and responses to a product announcement or PR blog post, where the option to turn the query into a feed would seem quite handy. WhosTalkin.com (recently reviewed on ReadWriteWeb.com) takes a more traditional search engine approach focused on the social web, with a plethora of sources. If it will keep the promise to soon offer the option to save searches and create RSS feeds, this tool could quickly become a must for Executive Protection operations and other Risk Mitigation professionals.

Shipping and Logistics Data: A New Web Source

ImportGenius is a relatively new Web service providing vast amount of data pertaining to shipping to and from US ports. Although much of the data here is open source to start with, the site provides convergence and organization of multiple sources for approachable fees. The $199/month ‘SupplySpy’ subscription leaves little doubt to the competitive intelligence market focus of the product. Interestingly, the New York Times mentioned the company’s analysis of large Apple shipments as possible evidence of the upcoming launch of the next generation iPhone.

Scout Labs: Brand Sentiments and Blogosphere Monitoring Matures

We have been addressing the subject of corporate and brand ’sentiment’ monitoring a few times this year (here, and here). The latest addition to this space may well prove to be most powerful and sophisticated thus far. Scout Labs, currently in private beta, will offer brand ’scouts’ (search agents) that can not only weigh the relevance and frequency of positive vs. negative ’sentiments’ in blogs and news outlets, but do so going back to January 2007. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has taken the site for a spin and reported about it here. How this service could benefit Crisis Management teams and EW efforts remains to be seen as the product reaches commercial availability and speed, cost, and flexibility of ’scouting’ criterion become clear. Certainly one to follow closely as it may become the biggest player in this arena.

Corporate Dirty Laundry: Where is it Hanging?

Back in February we mentioned a few sources of corporate praise and blame. As we often emphasize, anyone involved in enterprise resilience today cannot underestimate the potential impact of rumors and proprietary information flowing through anonymous online forums or blogs. These are our favorite OSInt starting point:

• Anonymous Employer – This appears to be an actual business which claims to make an attempt to contact the company subject of an anonymous report. Although free, their goal is to provide consulting and technology for corporate communication. There is no company directory or name search which means a subscription is required for it to be of any use. On the plus side, it’s a ‘wait and see’ approach for corporate security since any complaint logged to the system would be directly forwarded to the employer.

• BossBitching: As the title suggests, mostly focused on individuals rather than companies as a whole. Most comments we saw bore no direct reference to people or companies and number of posts we found for search and browsing was exceptionally small. Only worth mentioning in light of potential, future expansion – today, it is of little or no value. >>>

Money Laundering: Reference Reports Update

Security and Legal departments of financial institutions and multinational organizations may want to take note of a couple of recent publications on the subject of money laundering. The International Monetary Fund just released a detailed assessment of Gibraltar Anti-Money Laundering (AMF) and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) efforts. The report lists not only the core aspects of these activities but some of their shortcomings and various recommendations of good reference value. Also, earlier this month, The U.S. Departments of Treasury, Justice, and Homeland Security issued the 2007 National Money Laundering Strategy, “a report detailing continued efforts to dismantle money laundering and terrorist financing networks and bring these criminals to justice.” Not be forgotten is the regularly-updated Specially Designated Individuals List maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) within the US Treasury.

Applegate: Early Warning & Crisis Management in the Web 2.0 Era

What some in Silicon Valley are now calling ‘Applegate’ – a serious Apple Inc, stock price fluctuation caused by an inaccurate blog announcement – is a perfect sample of crisis management (CM) challenges for public companies in the Web economy. For those who missed it, here is the short version of the May 16 events:

• At 11:49 AM EST, famed tech blog Engadget announces that, according to an internal Apple source, the highly anticipated iPhone and Leopard (Apple’s next OS version) will not meet the target release dates.
• Between 11:56 AM and 12:02 AM, Apple stock faces a brutal selloff, with prices going from $107.89 to $103.42 – equivalent to a 3% or about $4 billion loss in market capitalization.
• Within less than two hours, Apple PR responds stating that the email suggesting the delay was a fake and that products are on schedule. (The full sequence of events and the Engadget version of the facts is available here.)
• Apples stock bounces back within the day but not without a good number of angry investors calling for an SEC investigation.

The 1982 Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol crisis remains one of the great examples of effective management in the CM field. . .

Country Reports on Terrorism 2006

Since 2004, the US State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism report has been replaced by the Country Reports on Terrorism. The reports, which are published annually by April 30 and are compiled with data provided by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), can be found here.

Darfur: Updated Crisis Guides

The Council on Foreign Relations has just released a concise, informative and visually stunning compendium of the ongoing genocide in the Sudan. The Darfur Crisis Guide includes narrated, interactive timelines, maps and images in a format capable of raising awareness in the many who still fear exploring this pressing human tragedy. Additional meta-sources on the subject are the dedicated Darfur analysis sites by the BBC, the International Crisis Group and ReliefWeb.

Electronic Jihad: A Traffic Analysis

Using Alexa for Web traffic analysis, two researchers at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies mapped traffic to a selected group of Arabic-language Jihadist web sites. The results, published in this commentary, would seem to contradict the notion that the bulk of the so-called ‘Electronic Jihad’ traffic originates in Europe or in core Persian Gulf States, showing instead a predominance of Middle-East and North Africa visitors. Again, open source tools and data put at relevant use.

Russian Political Parties: A Current Status Report

Another valuable analysis and summary report by the International Relations and Security Network: Issue 19 “of the Russian Analytical Digest discusses the role of political parties in Russia. It looks at the realignment of the party system, the list of officially registered parties in 2007, and the regional dimension of the Russian elections in 2007 and 2008.” Previous reports from the Russian Digest series can be found here.