EVERY so often a product or service comes along that makes me say “Man, I wish I’d thought of that”. BuzzNumbers, which launched today, is a prime example of such a service. BuzzNumbers basically scans social media platforms and provides monitoring and reports on conversations that’s happening in the social web.

Imagine you’re a stereo equipment company who’s just released your first line of headphones. A customer is sitting at a bus stop with a friend, and they engage in small talk. The customer notes in passing that “These ACME headphones are great, except the cord is only a metre long and I keep choking myself when I stand up”.

Now, with the event of Twitter and other similar platforms, that kind of short comment is still occurring, except the audience isn’t just one person anymore. BuzzNumbers can seek out conversations on your product, and give you a rundown of what people are saying about you. You can sit in on those ‘bus stop conversations’, even interact with the participants and resolve their issue on the spot (“Hey, sorry you’re unhappy. Ring us and we’ll mail out an extension cable!”).

What about if you already market your product through TV advertising and you’ve just launched a new campaign with an attractive women dancing like she’s on fire wearing your headphones and singing David Bowie tunes. And what about if 1,000 people are making blog posts saying how annoying her shrill voice is and how much they hate X brand for releasing such a travesty on their senses?

The possibilities in terms of your ability to fine tune products and campaigns, rectify problems, and quell the ill will you might have generated from a small oversight are almost limitless.

“The power shift from media institutions to online consumer communities means marketing and advertising agencies need tools to demonstrate the value of online campaigns to their clients. BuzzNumbers addresses this need by offering clients comprehensive insight into online conversations surrounding their brand. BuzzNumbers’ unique technology enables clients to measure the dollar value of online publicity against advertising rates.” says BuzzNumbers CEO Nick Holmes a Court.

One of the first things I thought of when seeing this service was its potential for marketers to use in place of a survey. Say a marketer rings me because Foxtel is launching a special offer in my area, and they want to know how much is a reasonable monthly charge for all the channels. I’m sure as hell not going to say $100, I’m going to give a low number with the knowledge they’re tailoring that product around responses. Instead of running surveys that can be swung in such a way, you could just check out what people are saying. Find out who’s complaining about the outrageous $100 fee for their pay TV, or who’s saying what a great deal the $70 package they just signed up for was.

The cool thing is, I probably haven’t even scratched the surface of what this could be used for. It’s like me telling you Google is for looking up cake recipes. You’ve probably got another, more personally useful purpose for it. Full details of exactly what can be done with the product are available at the BuzzNumbers website.

This is the kind of product I wish I’d had access to in some of my previous roles with both large and small corporations, I can even see a use for it in a cafe I helped a friend go through the business planning stages for. I’m to go ahead and make the claim that this is the single best tool for business I’ve seen released this year.