Briefs

Youthradio.us, By Luke Jones, Posted: July 11, 2009,

Everything you do or say online may be monitored by Pulse. Pulse, data mining software developed by New York-based Echometrix was released last week.

At the click of a mouse, marketers can access more than 132 million teen conversations. This includes comments you post on social networking sites, blogs , forums, and chatrooms as well as instant message conversations. Marketers then use this information to gauge your level of interest in certain products.

Pulse can deliver what traditional market research can't: what kids ages 7 through 21 are saying in their own words as they say them.

"It's an extremely highly-coveted demographic for marketers. Children control the purchases of roughly $190 billion a year worldwide. For example, car companies are interested in what kids are saying about their vehicles because 80 percent of the family car purchases are influenced by the children," said Echometrix CEO Jeffrey Greene.

So far Pulse has revealed that iPods are talked about 13 times more often than Zune, Pepsi is talked about 3.5 times more than Coke, and the iPhone beats Blackberry 4 to 1.