Radian6 and Visible Technologies were identified as the overall Leaders in the evaluation due to their varied and functional dashboards and innovative roadmaps. The evaluation also identified several Strong Performers, including Attensity, Converseon, Networked Insights, NM Incite, SDL, and Synthesio, each of which excelled in different areas such as data processing, social research, media planning, consulting services, or international capabilities. Lithium Technologies was identified as the sole Contender due to its easy-to-use self-service dashboard. The landscape overall contains many viable options for large enterprises.

1. FOR: Customer The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise
Intelligence
Professionals Listening Platforms, Q2 2012
by Zach Hofer-shall, April 24, 2012
key TakeaWays
The Listening platform Landscape is still Maturing and Moving
Although this is Forrester’s fourth Wave™ evaluation on the space, we still see new
entrants and the market still experiences its share of mergers and acquisitions.
Radian6 and Visible Technologies Lead The Market
Due to the varied functionality in their current offerings, Radian6 and Visible
Technologies meet today’s needs, and both presented competitive road maps to
extend their offerings.
The enterprise Listening platform Landscape holds Many Viable
options
Along with the two Leaders, many vendors offer competitive technology and
services in this crowded market.
Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, mA 02140 UsA
Tel: +1 617.613.6000 | Fax: +1 617.613.5000 | www.forrester.com

2. For Customer Intelligence Professionals April 24, 2012
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening
Platforms, Q2 2012
How Nine Vendors Stack Up In A Constantly Changing Market
by Zach Hofer-Shall
with Suresh Vittal, Dave Frankland, and Allison Smith
Why Read This Report
In Forrester’s 64-criteria evaluation of enterprise listening platforms vendors, we found that Radian6
and Visible Technologies lead the pack because of their variably functional dashboards and innovative
road maps. The landscape consists of many Strong Performers: Attensity with its data-processing focus,
Converseon with its research reporting, Networked Insights with its focus on media planning and buying,
NM Incite with its consulting services, SDL with its data collecting, and Synthesio with its international
expertise. The evaluation identified a single Contender, Lithium Technologies, whose strength comes from
its easy-to-use self-service dashboard.
Table Of Contents Notes & Resources
2 Listening Platforms Make Social Intelligence Forrester conducted lab evaluations in March
Possible 2012 and interviewed nine vendors and more
than 30 user companies.
The Listening Platform Landscape Continues Its
Evolution
Related Research Documents
2 Enterprise Listening Platform Evaluation
Overview The Enterprise Listening Platform Landscape
April 24, 2012
Defining The Enterprise Listening Platform
Market It’s Time For Listening Platforms To Grow Up
January 25, 2012
Enterprise Listening Platforms Serve Large,
The State Of Social Intelligence, 2011
Complicated, And International Customers
January 9, 2012
4 Varied Offerings Meet Today’s Demands
6 Vendor Profiles
Leaders Provide The Most Functionality
Strong Performers Come In All Shapes And
Sizes
Contenders Make Listening Easy
8 Supplemental Material
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available
resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar,
and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To
purchase reprints of this document, please email clientsupport@forrester.com. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.

3. For Customer Intelligence Professionals
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012 2
Listening Platforms Make Social Intelligence Possible
Social intelligence — the process of turning social media into actionable business insights —
requires technology assistance.1 The social Web is simply too big, too fast, and too full of irrelevance
and spam to manage alone. As a result, businesses turn to listening platforms to help capture social
data, manage and analyze its content through text analytics, and deliver insights in dashboards
and reporting services. Listening platforms are part of the way through their evolution — and
are currently at a point between the social media monitoring tools they started as and the critical
enterprise business analytics tools they must become.2
The Listening Platform Landscape Continues Its Evolution
Businesses evaluating the listening platform market have a tough task ahead: Hundreds of offerings
compete for attention, selling solutions to simplify social media.3 Differentiating among vendors in
the crowded landscape can be difficult and, due to recent market movements, is only getting more
complicated. Since our last evaluation:
■ Mergers and acquisitions swept the market. Since the last listening platform Forrester Wave™,
the space has experienced a great deal of movement. Three of the vendors participating in this
evaluation have arrived here through acquisition: Attensity by acquiring Biz360, Lithium
Technologies through its acquisition of Scout Labs, and SDL through its acquisition of Alterian —
which previously acquired Techrigy. And, although Radian6 still operates under its same name, it
now sits under its large parent, salesforce.com, following the 2011 acquisition. Most recently,
during the process of this evaluation, Visible Technologies acquired one of the market
competitors, Cymfony.
■ Technology giants started dipping their toes in the listening waters. Over the past 18 months,
many of the world’s largest technology companies have launched listening technologies. Both
Adobe and SAS launched social analytics offerings; IBM now offers Cognos Consumer Insight;
and, with every release, Google Analytics adds more social media coverage to its web analytics
offering. It’s clear that this is a space that will have a new series of competitors in the near future.
Enterprise Listening Platform Evaluation Overview
To assess the state of the enterprise listening platform market and see how the vendors stack up
against each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of top enterprise listening
platform vendors.
Defining The Enterprise Listening Platform Market
After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we
developed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against 64 criteria,
which we grouped into three high-level buckets:
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 24, 2012

4. For Customer Intelligence Professionals
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012 3
■ Current offering. We evaluated each vendor’s existing product and services offering to
determine its strength compared with today’s buyer demands. We reviewed the vendors’ data
source coverage and data processing capabilities — such as their automated sentiment analysis
and spam detection — to determine the quality of data the vendors provide. We then evaluated
the vendors’ dashboard functionalities as well as their technical integration offerings. Lastly, we
evaluated the vendors’ professional services and reporting capabilities.
■ Strategy. We evaluated each vendor’s overall strategy, focusing on how its product and services
meet both today’s and tomorrow’s demands. Within the strategy component, we reviewed the
management team, the vendors’ technology and services road maps, and their partner strategies.
■ Market presence. We evaluated the vendors’ footprints in the market to determine the relative
size of each offering. We reviewed the number of customers and the growth in customers as well
as overall customer satisfaction. We also covered the vendors’ financial strengths, evaluating
each vendor’s revenue and financial stability. Lastly, we evaluated the vendors’ employee bases to
determine how well each is equipped to handle enterprise customers.
Enterprise Listening Platforms Serve Large, Complicated, And International Customers
Forrester included nine vendors in the assessment: Attensity, Converseon, Lithium Technologies,
Networked Insights, NM Incite, Radian6, SDL, Synthesio, and Visible Technologies. Each of these
vendors has (see Figure 1):
■ A large footprint in the listening platform market. To determine the vendors most relevant to
today’s market, we evaluated companies with at least $10 million in annual revenue from their
social listening offerings or vendors with at least 100 customers.
■ A large concentration of enterprise customers. With a new focus on enterprise listening
platforms, we evaluated vendors with at least 40% of their customer base serving $1billion
companies or with more than 100 enterprise customers.
■ A diverse customer base, serving horizontally across the organization. Enterprise listening
platforms, by definition, must be capable of serving horizontally across the organization — not
just a single team. We evaluated vendors that sell to an evenly distributed customer base and
excluded vendors that have a customer base of more than 40% of any one organizational role,
such as market research or public relations.
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 24, 2012

5. For Customer Intelligence Professionals
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012 4
Figure 1 Evaluated Vendors: Vendor Information And Selection Criteria
Vendor Date evaluated
Attensity February 2012
Converseon February 2012
Lithium Technologies February 2012
Networked Insights February 2012
NM Incite February 2012
Radian6 February 2012
SDL February 2012
Synthesio February 2012
Visible Technologies February 2012
Vendor selection criteria
Selected vendors must have $10 million in annual revenue from their listening offering or at least 100
active customers.
At least 40% of the selected vendors’ customers must be $1 billion-plus companies — or they must have a
minimum of 100 enterprise customers.
No more than 40% of the vendor’s business can come from a single business line, such as public relations
or market research.
Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
Varied Offerings Meet Today’s demands
Social intelligence means many things to many parts of the organization. Social data informs
marketing measurement, inspires market insights, identifies customer data, and tracks customer
issues. As a result, there were multiple ways to perform well in this evaluation — either serving
many of these functions adequately or serving a few of them specifically well. The evaluation
uncovered a market in which (see Figure 2):
■ Radian6 and Visible Technologies lead the market. Radian6 and Visible Technologies lead
the landscape, sharing two key strengths: broadly functional dashboards and innovative road
maps. Although each has key differentiators — Radian6 with its engagement tools and Visible
Technologies with its focus on data quality — they share a focus on integrations. Radian6
and Visible Technologies received top scores across criteria relating to integration with other
technology systems.
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 24, 2012

6. For Customer Intelligence Professionals
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012 5
■ Attensity, Converseon, Networked Insights, NM Incite, SDL, and Synthesio are strong.
Although there is a large pack of vendors in the middle, each earned its spot for a different
reason. Converseon is a Strong Performer because of its social research practice; Synthesio due
to its international strengths; SDL for its social data quality; Networked Insights for its strong
connection to the media world; Attensity for its ability to handle a variety of data; and NM
Incite for its strength in consulting services.
■ Lithium Technologies is a Contender. Although this large landscape contains many
viable options for large companies, the evaluation uncovered a single Contender. Lithium
Technologies has a large footprint in the market, excelling with its dashboard offering. It
provides simple, self-service tools for monitoring and analyzing social data.
This evaluation of the enterprise listening platform market is intended to be a starting point only.
We encourage readers to view detailed product evaluations and adapt the criteria weightings to fit
their individual needs through the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool.
Figure 2 Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 ‘12
Risky Strong
Bets Contenders Performers Leaders
Strong
Go online to download
the Forrester Wave tool
Visible
Synthesio Technologies for more detailed product
Networked Insights evaluations, feature
SDL comparisons, and
Radian6 customizable rankings.
NM Incite
Converseon
Current Lithium
offering Technologies Attensity
Market presence
Weak
Weak Strategy Strong
Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 24, 2012

7. For Customer Intelligence Professionals
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012 6
Figure 2 Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 ‘12 (Cont.)
Lithium Technologies
Visible Technologies
Networked Insights
Converseon
Weighting
Forrester’s
Synthesio
NM Incite
Attensity
Radian6
SDL
CURRENT OFFERING 50% 2.63 3.02 2.66 3.03 2.95 3.28 3.24 3.15 3.52
Background information 0% 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Data sources 10% 3.19 3.37 2.43 3.24 3.06 3.73 3.43 2.97 3.19
Data processing 15% 3.25 3.10 1.90 3.35 2.80 2.65 3.45 3.15 3.45
Dashboard functionality 45% 2.95 2.85 3.25 2.75 2.35 3.95 3.10 2.95 3.65
Integration 10% 2.40 1.60 2.50 2.10 2.65 3.75 3.25 3.15 3.25
Consulting and analysis services 20% 1.30 3.90 2.10 3.80 4.50 1.80 3.30 3.70 3.60
STRATEGY 50% 2.97 3.68 2.25 2.96 2.37 4.36 2.78 3.38 3.70
Strength of management team 15% 3.00 4.00 3.00 3.00 2.00 4.00 2.00 4.00 3.00
Corporate strategy 15% 3.70 2.80 3.60 2.70 2.80 3.60 3.20 2.90 3.00
Product strategy 70% 2.80 3.80 1.80 3.00 2.35 4.60 2.85 3.35 4.00
Cost 0% 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
MARKET PRESENCE 0% 3.13 2.52 3.93 3.78 2.91 4.18 4.00 3.33 3.42
Customers 70% 3.23 2.18 4.15 3.76 2.70 3.97 4.35 3.46 3.67
Financials 20% 2.15 3.15 3.50 3.80 2.85 5.00 3.15 3.10 2.15
Employees 10% 4.40 3.60 3.20 3.90 4.50 4.00 3.20 2.90 4.20
All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).
Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
vENDOR PROFILES
Leaders Provide The Most Functionality
■ Radian6. Radian6 has the largest market footprint, with more than twice the number of
customers of the next closest enterprise listening platform. In early 2011, salesforce.com
acquired Radian6, and, under this giant umbrella, Radian6 remains the most innovative vendor
in the landscape. It continues to add features to its dashboard on a regular basis. But even after
many improvements — including a dedicated insights dashboard, which utilizes third-party
data analysis tools — Radian6 customers still report data quality issues. To remain a Leader,
Radian6 must double its efforts toward fixing its automated analysis tools or lose customers to
more data-focused vendors.
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 24, 2012

8. For Customer Intelligence Professionals
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012 7
■ Visible Technologies. In late 2010, Visible Technologies launched a completely revamped
dashboard which now receives the top customer reference scores in the market. Visible
Technologies’ dashboard provides broad functionality, serving measurement, research, and
engagement needs. In April 2012, Visible Technologies acquired a market competitor, Cymfony.
By adding Cymfony’s international footprint and consulting resources, Visible Technologies
only increases its enterprise offerings. But while the acquisition fills in many of its existing
holes, the company must stay focused on its data integrations and technology offers, all while
combining the two parties’ research and consulting services.
Strong Performers Come In All Shapes And Sizes
■ Converseon. Converseon offers a combination of technology and services to provide a
customized approach to managing and analyzing social data. In 2011, Converseon launched a
new dashboard, and the vendor continues to add to its already strong consulting and custom
reporting offerings. But, to become a Leader, Converseon must focus on data, both inside its
dashboard and out. Converseon — with its strength in consulting services — currently misses
the opportunity to extend its offerings by helping its clients integrate social data with their
marketing and business data.
■ Synthesio. Synthesio is the smallest and youngest vendor of the list but has one of the larger
footprints with enterprises in Europe. Based in Paris, Synthesio takes an internationally focused
approach that combines multilingual human analysis on top of its technologies. But Synthesio
must look beyond social media to become a Leader. Although its current strengths come from
social analytics, research, and consulting, Synthesio may become trapped selling to social media
teams. To grow into a Leader, Synthesio must scale its offering across the organization.
■ SDL. At the beginning of 2012, SDL — a large global software vendor — acquired Alterian,
which previously offered its SM2 social media analytics dashboard. Now, through the SDL
relationship, SM2 remains a popular dashboard but increases its international capabilities and
presence. SDL provides a broad variety of social content and a series of technologies to address
multiple languages automatically. But for SDL to become a Leader, it must focus on improving
its self-service dashboard while dealing with its recent acquisition.
■ Networked Insights. Networked Insights follows the same processes as the other vendors in the
market but specializes in a targeted insight delivery: media planning and buying. The vendor
built its SocialSense dashboard around these marketing needs, giving it an unrivaled advantage
for socially informed media planning and buying but leaving it lacking in some broader social
intelligence applications. Networked Insights’ services team also provides strategy and reporting
around many marketing and business needs, but its core focus remains in the media space.
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 24, 2012

9. For Customer Intelligence Professionals
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012 8
■ Attensity. Following the acquisition of Biz360 in 2010, Attensity now integrates social media
data into its overall text analytics offering. Due to Attensity’s legacy in the unstructured data
world, it excels at handling sources beyond just social data and offers integrations into a variety
of technology systems. But with Attensity’s data strength come dashboard issues. To become
a Leader, Attensity must unify its user experience across its currently fragmented product line,
improve its dashboard interface, and provide more of the data analysis tools that social buyers
expect.
■ NM Incite. NM Incite is the joint venture between Nielsen’s BuzzMetrics team and McKinsey’s
management consulting practice, which offers technology and strategy services to help
companies manage social media. NM Incite offers a variety of research and consulting offerings,
garnering positive customer references. But while NM Incite continues to excel in its social
research practice, it must address a few issues to become a Leader. Most prominently, NM Incite
must improve its dashboard offering, improve its data quality, and address its limitations around
non-social data.
Contenders Make Listening Easy
■ Lithium Technologies. Following the acquisition of Scout Labs in 2010, Lithium added social
media monitoring capabilities to its existing social business software suite. Lithium’s core
product is its community platform offering, which it also feeds into its monitoring tool. This
gives Lithium an advantage for customers of its community platform technology or customers
looking for a social technology suite. But Lithium’s strength in integration with its communities
is also its problem. By focusing on internal integrations, Lithium lacks external integrations,
both with nonsocial data and into other external technology systems. And while Lithium
customers reported positive experiences with the dashboard, the vendor must also address its
data quality issues.
Supplemental Material
Online Resource
The online version of Figure 2 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed
product evaluations and customizable rankings.
Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave
Forrester used a combination of four data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each
solution:
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 24, 2012

10. For Customer Intelligence Professionals
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012 9
■ Hands-on lab evaluations. Vendors spent a half day with Forrester, conducting hands-on
evaluations of their products using a scenario-based testing methodology. We evaluated each
product using the same scenario, creating a level playing field by evaluating every product on
the same criteria.
■ Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation
criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where
necessary to gather details of vendor qualifications.
■ Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations of their products’ functionality.
We used findings from these product demos to validate details of each vendor’s product
capabilities.
■ Customer reference surveys. To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also
conducted reference checks with at least three of each vendor’s current customers.
The Forrester Wave Methodology
We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated
in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these
vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate
vendors that have limited customer references and products that don’t fit the scope of our evaluation.
After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop
the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria,
we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires,
demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their
review, and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and
strategies.
We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large user companies — and/or
other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document — and then score the vendors based
on a clearly defined scale. These default weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we
encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-based
tool. The final scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering,
strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product
capabilities and vendor strategies evolve.
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 24, 2012

11. For Customer Intelligence Professionals
The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012 10
Endnotes
1
For more information about social intelligence, see the March 12, 2010, “Defining Social Intelligence”
report.
2
Forrester describes a mandate for listening platforms’ future road map. See the January 25, 2012, “It’s Time
For Listening Platforms To Grow Up” report.
3
To learn more about the listening platform vendor landscape, see the April 24, 2012, “The Enterprise
Listening Platform Landscape” report.
© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 24, 2012

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