I'm playing with Radian6 which I wrote about recently - Radian6 Social Media Monitoring Initial Review  to search for markers to the Presidential Election - I wanted to play with Radian6 more but I've been so busy - I didn't have a chance - and I'm only touching on things now I'd like to explore in much more depth later:

Radian6 New Comparative Topic Monitor was used to determine how much buzz Barack Obama is generating vs. John McCain - over the last 30 days - US Only, English Only (you can Geo-Target somewhat using Radian6, as you can also select the languages you want to focus on).

Right now, Barack Obama has about 3 times as many posts on him in the last 30 days as John McCain has had.  On Obama, the most influential posts (see below) are not the most current - but produced the most "engagement" - which I wrote about in my previous post about Radian6 Radian6 Social Media Monitoring Initial Review

Meanwhile - this post from AOL, was the most influential (Engaged) regarding John McCain:

And I could quickly see the top 10 most Engaging Posts about Barack Obama

I used New Topic Trend Widget to get the 10 most "influential" and "Engaged" posts on Obama over the last month

Also generated a Topic Cloud comparing the influecnes of John McCain vs. Barack Obama

I also generated a "comment cloud" with Radian6 around Obama:

I can conceive using the Topic Cloud Widget to figure out what stories are having the most impact right now for a particular term or set of terms.

But the Widget I really wanted to look at tonight was the New Influence viewer and Radian6 are now showing me the most influential posts or stories

But Radian6 goes farther and tells me what makes each of the top posts the most influential and it also gives me a clue on how I might use Radian6 to enhance Social Media work:

There's a lot to play with and I'm just figuring out how I might use Radian6.