Recently announced software updates:

• Clarabridge
  Enterprise 4.1: Sentiment intensity, data visualization and reports, wizards and templates, enhanced anaphora support, increased online training.

• Gnip
  Facebook Search API.

• Noteca
  Sidebar filtering controls, improved Twitter monitoring, support for multiple Twitter accounts, manual deletion of results.

• PostRank
  Entity extraction, geographic location recognition.

• Scup
  Automated sampling tag.

• Sentiment Metrics
  Influencer, comparison, channel charts.

• Synthesio
  Advanced widget settings, Facebook coverage, filter by influence.

4 May - Alterian is presenting a free webinar, What You Write Matters: Social Media Customer Service That Supports Your Customer and Champions Your Brand, 11:00 AM EDT (GMT -4). The session features Sonia Holland, Social Media Manager for Rent-A-Center, Inc.

4 May - Jive Software is presenting a free webinar, Jive Market Engagement: Combining Social Media Monitoring and Engagement with SBS, 1:00 PM EDT (GMT -4).

23–26 May (Washington, DC) - ICWSM 2010

25–26 May (Boston) - 6th annual Text Analytics Summit

16–18 June (Barcelona) - AMEC & IPR's 2nd European Summit on Measurement

25 July (Washington) - ACM's SIGKDD Workshop on Social Media Analytics

Attensity Group has announced its acquisition of Biz360. Biz360 Community Insights will be known as Attensity360. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

• SMA's acquisitions scorecard
  
• press release

Recently released research and white papers:

• A new way to measure word-of-mouth marketing, McKinsey

• Baromètre ECHO : les français face aux médias sociaux, Scanblog

• 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, Social Media Examiner

Kantar Media has announced the merger of Millward Brown Precis Europe/US within Kantar Media’s Intelligence Sector, effective 1 May. Millward Brown will continue to represent Precis in Australia.

• press release

Wikio has entered the SMA market with the acquisition of Neotia. The company has been building its social media marketing capabilities with the earlier acquisitions of ebuzzing and PromoDigital. via Comment ça marche

• SMA's acquisitions scorecard
  
• press release (PDF)
  
• Wikio blog | English
  
• Neotia blog

Networked Insights announced that they have received $5 million in an investment round led by Kegonsa Capital Partners. The investment brings the company's total capital raised to $9 million.

• press release

Recently announced software updates:

• BuzzStream
  Link tracking and management refinements.

• Cision
  Integration of social media content from Radian6 in CisionPoint.

• Sysomos
  Facebook Graph API integration.

27 April- Biz360 is presenting a free webinar, Leveraging Social Support Communities for your business, 2:00 PM EDT (GMT -4). The session features SwimFish CTO John Moore.

29 April - Radian6 is presenting a free webinar, eAnalytics with Jim Sterne, 2:00 PM EDT (GMT -4).

4 May - Jive Software is presenting a free webinar, Jive Market Engagement: Combining Social Media Monitoring and Engagement with SBS, 1:00 PM EDT (GMT -4).

23–26 May (Washington, DC) - ICWSM 2010

25–26 May (Boston) - 6th annual Text Analytics Summit

16–18 June (Barcelona) - AMEC & IPR's 2nd European Summit on Measurement

NetBase announced the planned April 30 release of ConsumerBase, its platform for generating customer insights from social media content and companies' internal data.

• blog post

J.D. Power and Associates launched J.D. Power Auto Intelligence Monitor, an industry-specific social media analysis platform for the auto industry. The system's dashboard is updated daily and includes a two-year data archive. Analysis is tailored to the industry with a taxonomy of 37 automakers, nearly 300 models, and 12 key topics.

• press release

Bazaarvoice and The Nielsen Company announced an alliance that will allow clients to incorporate customer reviews from sites powered by Bazaarvoice into Nielsen My BuzzMetrics. Customer review data will also be combined with other Nielsen data sources in the company's research and analysis services.

• press release
  
• Bazaarvoice blog

Recently announced software updates:

• BrandsEye
  Time zone support, author report, linked domains report.

• Moreover
  Social Media Metabase: new user interface.

• Spiral16
  URL search, bulk reporting options.

• uberVU
  New mentions feature; Google Buzz, MySpace and Facebook public pages coverage.

20–23 April (San Mateo, CA) - SNCR's NewComm Forum

23–26 May (Washington, DC) - ICWSM 2010

25–26 May (Boston) - 6th annual Text Analytics Summit

16–18 June (Barcelona) - AMEC & IPR's 2nd European Summit on Measurement

Recently released research and white papers:

• SXSW Buzz Report, Biz360

• Observatoire de l'autombile verte, Linkfluence

• Netnography: The Marketer's Secret Weapon—How Social Media Understanding Drives Innovation, NetBase

• If Not Now, When? Socializing the Enterprise (PDF), Radian6
  

12 April - SAS will launch SAS Social Media Analytics with a live webcast, 11:00 AM EDT (GMT -4).

13 April (New York) - Sentiment Analysis Symposium

15 April - Biz360 will present a free webinar with Nathan Gilliatt, How to evaluate your social media listening model and analysis platform, 4:00 PM EDT (GMT -4).

20–23 April (San Mateo, CA) - SNCR's NewComm Forum

23–26 May (Washington, DC) - ICWSM 2010

25–26 May (Boston) - 6th annual Text Analytics Summit

16–18 June (Barcelona) - AMEC & IPR's 2nd European Summit on Measurement

Recently announced software updates:

• BuzzStream
  Performance improvements, many feature updates.

Clarabridge announced the general availability of Clarabridge Self Service, a hosted text analytics service that works on uploaded files in Microsoft Excel formats (xls or xlsx). Clarabridge will process up to 1,000 verbatims per month for free; additional analysis is priced starting at 15¢ per verbatim.

• press release

Crimson Hexagon announced that it has filled a $2M Series A-2 funding round . Golden Seeds led the round that includes Beacon Angels, New York Angels, Angel Investor Forum and Zelkova Ventures.

Also, Scott Centurino has replaced co-founder Candace Fleming as CEO.

Recently announced software updates:

• Buzzdetector
  Manual source addition and analysis.

• Whitevector
  Automated PDF reports via email, Facebook and Twitter coverage, Buzzwords chart.