Blab Offers Marketers A Crystal Ball, Giving Insight Into What Will Trend Next

With its launch today at the 2013 ad:tech Summit, Blab claims to be the first commercial platform to predict social media conversations up to 72 hours before they happen.

Applying algorithms that analyze text, images, and videos from more than 50,000 real-time data sources, Blab organizes billions of conversations to predict future conversations within 24, 48 and 72-hour windows. Designed using a SaaS platform, marketers access Blab’s Conversation Canvas dashboard to find opportunities and threats in real-time, making it possible to devise strategies and develop content based on future conversations and topics that are about to trend.

“With Blab, any brand, organization or cause can transform from a reactive stance to a proactive one,” said Blab’s co-founder and CEO Randy Browning in a product announcement released today.

While predictive analysis software is not new, Blab says they are the first to apply their patented predictive analytic technology to data streams from social channels and the web. The software allows users to categorize their audiences by lifestyles rather than predetermined keywords or demographics. Blab identifies predictable patterns that signal future conversations by analyzing the size, direction, and various other characteristics of the billions of social media conversations it analyzes.

David Snelling, also a co-founder and Blab’s CTO, emphasized Blab’s intuitive interface, stating, “What we’ve done is harness the power to analyze and predict behavior across the entire social web through an easy-to-use, highly flexible dashboard interface that brand marketers can pick up and start using tomorrow.”

According to a report from eMarketer, 53 percent of marketers surveyed plan to make greater use of real-time data in their 2013 marketing campaigns. As marketers turn to social media data for their marketing efforts, Blab and other social media analytic tools are likely to become more and more popular.

[This article has been updated since it was originally published.]

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Amy Gesenhues

Amy Gesenhues is a senior editor for Third Door Media, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs, SoftwareCEO, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.