Just got the news today Alterian SM2 Techrigy is meeting or upping Radian6′s play with an Engagement Console of it’s own; sounds like the capabilities are similar to what Radian6 has today.   My recent interactions with Jim Reynolds over at Alterian have shown me that there’s a lot going on behind the scenes upgrading what was the Techrigy platform and adding new capabilities to it.

I’ve made some  recommendations over the last 6 months  and what I’ve seen (along with the new dashboard that runs on top of Silverlight) has been a platform that compares well to Radian6 but may be easier to work with because it’s not running in Flash and does have some automatic keyword categorization features that Radian6 lacks.

But Jim showed me there’s  a bit more that has been done on an API level, and through scripting that enhances categorization features already built in.  While I still prefer Radian6 for Alerts, like what I did with Havana Central,  and a perhaps, fuller cut of the data (which can be argued plus and minus) pretty much everything else that you can do in Radian6 you can also do in Alterian.     Alterian also has the advantage, along with Sysomos and other HTML based tools of being able to cut and paste queries into the platform, something R6 really ought to address soon.  Entry level pricing of both platforms is about the same but Alterian is more flexible in how you can use the bandwidth, which might come in handy as you trying to juggle accounts and bandwidth/budget.

Here’s more information about Alterian’s Engagement Console.

Alterian SM2 Product Update, New Release 4.7

Alterian is excited to announce the launch of our beta version of the SM2 engagement console.

Coming Soon!

Our enterprise-level application will allow you to respond and actively engage in social media conversations while coordinating your outreach across multiple departments.

The interactive workflow process will allow you to respond, assign, prioritize and rank status by importance.

Watch out for additional exciting information on our product offering.

SM2 4.7 Contents

• Increased content collection, up to 40 million new social media results per day
• Ability to create new Categories in Search Setup Wizard
• Enhanced Dashboard features
• Improved language refinement (German, Czech and Turkish)
• Bulk Import functionality
• Improved Keyword validation

This 4.7 release represents a series of improvements Alterian is committed to providing our clients.