Bot News
Surveillance Bots Scope Out Competitors, Misinformation

By Brian Proffitt

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
--William S. Burroughs

If you own a business, the chances are good there's somebody out there watching you right now. Potential customers and your competitors are just the start. And that burning ears sensation? That's likely somebody talking about your company--and they may have nothing to do with your business at all.

Now a number of specialized bots are out there that want you to start watching them: all of these people who may be affect your business without your knowing it. This new category of bots are called surveillance bots, for that is exactly what they do: watch various sections of the Internet, looking for news or even mentions of your company or any target you want.

Traditionally, public relations firms have utilized media clipping services that cut, paste, or copy newspaper or video mentions of a given company. In recent years, these services have extended to the Internet, as various "legitimate" news services such as CNN and the New York Times have migrated to the Web and new information outlets have sprung up.

To scan all of these online news outlets takes some time, but it can be accomplished with traditional search engines and news bots. What is more ephemeral is the information being discussed about a company in other, less-accessbile online outlets, such as discussion boards.

While they may not seem potentially hazardous to some, online message board participants can propogate, intentionally or otherwise, misinformation or erroneous facts about a company that, given enough of a groundswell, can seriously jeopardize a company's reputation.

Disgruntled employees, stock manipulators, and competitors can be some of the intentional instigators of this online equivalent of slipping a rat in the restaurant kitchen. And that's not even counting the thousands of erroneous rumors and urban legends that can pop up on the Internet by well-meaning, but completely wrong, people.

In a move that seems eerily Orwellian, some surveillance bot companies can send their bot software out to online chatrooms, message centers, and newsgroups and keep any electronic eye on what's being said about a company and who's saying it.

Another feature of surveillance bots is their ability to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. By tracking information on other businesses in your market, the bot firms all espouse, a better picture of the marketplace is generated.

Other services include identifying sites diverting traffic or revenue, finding sites selling counterfeit goods, or locating sites controlling use of proprietary content, such as cybersquatters.

All of the bots used by these firms are variations of the basic news and search bots' theme: target a company and crawl through various sites looking for mentions of the company. What makes these bots unique is the filtering capability that they use to lose information is not essential what the client needs. If one were to launch a search on Microsoft, for instance, the search results would be huge. Filtering technology helps weed out the all but the most pertinent information.

Human agents are an essential piece in the services offered by many of these surveillance bot companies. Once the data is gathered, it is compiled in the form of live on-line graphs, or carefully tabulated analysis reports that are distributed to the client. Whatever the form, each surveillance company wants to establish itself apart from their own competitors in the extra services they provide above and beyond what data their bots provide.

Examining the Bot Companies

To get a better idea of how these bots will work for clients, here is a brief look at each of five surveillance bot companies out there on the Web today.

CyberAlert 3.0 (CyberAlert, Inc.)

This subscription-based service provides daily e-mails and Web generated statistics of any mention of the topics you specify.

CyberAlert monitors and over 2,000 online news sources as well as all Usenet news groups. CyberAlert also scans, accroding to company figures, "2.2 million other Web sites, including Web-based discussion groups."

No samples of the search results were available, but from the descriptions of the product, it appears that no human analysis of the gathered data is performed. This service provides the clippings as is, for one monthly fee.

Cyveillance (Cyveillance, Inc.)

Using their patent-pending NetSapien technology, Cyveillance offers data gathered from across the Internet.

With a combination of search engines and bots, NetSapient scans Web site content and newsgroup postings "to provide in-depth information about the intent, content and meaning of the each site, page, and posting." This focus on intent, the company maintains, enables Cyveillance to find more relavent data.

Cyveillance puts a great deal of effort not only into the data gathering side, but also into the analysis services it offers, including competitive and marketing intelligence and brand management.

eWatch (PR Newswire)

eWatch is one of the first companies to venture into this area, having been around since 1994.

eWatch, purchased by PR Newswire in early 2000, monitors Internet publications, discussion forums, bulletin boards and electronic mailing lists for references. Clients use eWatch to monitor public reputation, rumors, stock
manipulation and insider trading.

Reports generated from eWatch are straightforward, with links to and excerpts from the articles that mention the client company. Pricing is done on an annual subscription basis.

NetCurrents (NetCurrents)

NetCurrents offers a very comprehensive package of services based on its CyperPerception technology. The base services include active monitoring of Internet sites for your company's mentions and a very graphic oriented statistics report generated live on the NetCurrents Web site.

Human analysis is very key to the services provided, as NetCurrents will actively assist your company in developing online marketing strategies (and counter-strategies if the need arises) for your business. The company's offerings stress the need for real-time monitoring and repairing of online rumors and misperceptions.

The company also offers MobilePerceptions, which will deliver your data to the Palm VII PDA.

RivalWatch (RivalWatch)

Unlike the other services in this list, RivalWatch focuses less on what's being said about your business and more on what your competitors are doing.

RivalWatch's search technology monitors your competition to perform product assortment, pricing, promotions, and services analysis. In this way, RivalWatch maintains, you can remain competitive even if the entire world is a potential draw for your customers.

RivalWatch also offers products and services for manufacturing firms as well as Internet-based businesses.

(With thanks to Larry Watanabe.)