One of the very coolest things I saw demoed today was an application that’s especially targeted at marketers and PR people: BuzzLogic. It’s one of the most elegant interfaces I’ve seen in any marketing app, let alone one so leading edge as far as enabling companies to determine what the marketplace is saying in this age of new “social media.” Buzzlogiclogo Sure, there are others trying to help people measure what’s being said about their company in the blogosphere, but they’re nowhere near as visually rich and powerful as this one.

“Social media may soon rival mainstream media in impact, yet there’s been no meaningful way to understand or untangle it,” said Rob Crumpler, CEO. “BuzzLogic turns the chaos of social media into a channel that can be understood and monetized.”

BuzzLogic is different from first-generation tools such as blog search engines, which only tell marketers who’s popular, not who is influential. Its proprietary algorithm determines who it is that’s influential, the company’s Thad Eby told me, through several tenets, including “relevancy, currency, attention over time, and traffic — not just a blogger’s, but the traffic of those who link to him or her.”

The service is built around a “monitor, map, measure, and engage model,” to support what marketers need to do to stay on top of potential crises and take advantage of marketplace opportunities. Buzzlogicmap One of the cool features it has is the ability to draw “social maps” of influencers in a conversation, which the company describes is “essentially a critical path of the relationships between key influencers.”

CEO Rob Crumpler said of the company’s pricing: “We will be disruptive in this market, with very low entry-level pricing that allows small and medium sized businesses to compete on an equal footing with big companies.” He told me that starts at $500 per month, and small PR firms find that palatable, apparently. But the first thing I asked was whether he had plans to lower that to address an even larger market, and he said he did. It’s funny, because another very smart tech marketer I know who’s here did the same thing: bitched that the price was too high. I think we both agree — this thing has broad appeal, and the price is bound to come down as more and more companies discover and use it. Oh, one more thing: BuzzLogic hasn’t even raised an A round yet, but a well known uber-angel is behind them, Ron Conway. The closing comment from CEO Crumpler, after he said to come see him in their booth, was “We’re opening our Series A today.” Yes, indeed, you are.

I’m signing up for the private beta, for sure. And I got an invite for my friend Steve Borsch at Connecting the Dots, too. Hey, if you’re a marketer that needs to measure influence, I would *beg* to get on that list! The guy to contact is Thad Eby.

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