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"A social analytics startup claims it can isolate tweets that are potential sales leads. \nLaunching in beta on Tuesday, Viralheat's Human Intent simplifies lead generation by helping businesses pinpoint social media users on the cusp of making purchasing decisions.\nHuman Intent aims to eliminate the need to manually read and parse through large amounts of tweets and other social updates to determine potential sales leads. Instead, users set up keyword searches and the product automatically sorts through social updates to identify those that express potential purchasing intent.\nAll of this data can be viewed in Viralheat's current dashboard setup, and can be exported to Excel or Salesforce. In the future, brands will be able to engage directly with consumers from Viralheat, but the product currently links directly to consumers' social updates, where social reps can go to respond.\nViralheat's CTO &amp; co-founder Vishal Sankhla told Mashable that the company started working on Human Intent last year after seeing that a number of its users were monitoring keywords to gain insight into purchasing intent, using phrases such as \"looking to buy a bed\" or \"looking to buy a phone.\"\nThe algorithm mixes sentiment analysis, language processing and predictive analytics to decide where a user may be in the purchasing process. It identifies people looking to buy something, people complaining about an existing product they own or perhaps looking for a replacement, or anyone who may have an issue with a service they currently use, Sankhla explained. The algorithm also has built-in filters for intent actions by verticals. Sankhla noted, \"Autos leads are not the same as finance leads, insurance leads, electronic leads, software services leads, etc.\"\nFor higher accuracy, the product includes a spam filter, which removes retweets and mentions that are not relevant. Finally, the algorithm learns through human curation. If it makes a mistake, users can mark tweets that should or should not be identified as leads. As more feedback rolls in, the algorithm improves.\nWhile the algorithm isn't perfect, Sankhla says that the team is focused on increasing accuracy. Meanwhile, the product in its current form will help marketers \"narrow down to a much smaller set of potential leads, rather than just looking at all the tweets that come in.\"\nLaunching in beta, Human Intent will only be available to existing customers at no additional cost (for now). Once the product launches in full, pricing and availability will be announced, and beta users will receive a discount.\nFounded in 2009 with the goal of democratizing social media analytics, Viralheat's core product is a social media analytics tool that scours the web, including social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and YouTube, to monitor mentions of a brand and assess the success of social media campaigns by measuring influence, sentiment and virility. Current Viralheat users include Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Nokia, ESPN and eBay, among others.\nViralheat's pricing is based on supporting \"enterprise grade features without the enterprise price tag.\" Three price points are available: basic ($9.99 per month), professional ($29.99 per month) and business ($89.99 per month). Unlike similar tools in the marketplace, Viralheat allows unlimited mentions for all price points. So, if you set up your profile to monitor all mentions of \"laptop,\" for example, you can rest assured that you won't be charged for the unpredictable number of social updates that flow in containing the word \"laptop.\" Human Intent now enables users to better sort through social updates and act upon those that are potential leads.\nFor a closer look at Human Intent, check out the demo below.\n\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, hammondovi"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/01/25/viralheat-human-intent/>