Start-up offers free social media analytics service

Viralheat offers Web users and publishers a limited slice of the data it collects from the social Web for paying customers

Computerworld - Viralheat, a start-up that mines social networks to help companies gauge public sentiment about their businesses, this week announced plans to distribute some of its social media analytics data to users at no charge.

On Tuesday, the San Jose-based company launched Social Trends, a service that allows Web users to gain real-time access to slices of some of the data it collects and aggregates from various social media sites for its paying customers.

Viralheat is also offering publishers a free widget that lets them embed real-time social media analytics tools into editorial content.

The company said that the ESPN sports network has already agreed to use Social Trends to compile and display on its Web site popularity rankings for professional football teams.

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(Editor: the free service seems to have spotty coverage: there were no results for searches for "data mining" or "clinton", although there were results for "analytics")