I’ve just seen there’s a new release on the SQL Azure Labs site – Codename “Social Analytics” (that’s a bad codename by the way – did MS finally run out of place names in Washington state?). Full details are here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlazurelabs/labs/socialanalytics.aspx
It’s a service that allows you to collect social web data and then either use it for business analysis or automate responses; it has an OData endpoint so the obvious tool for doing the analysis is PowerPivot, and I guess it could also be a data source for Data Explorer when that comes along. At the moment it’s very limited in that you can only analyse the results of one of two feeds that aggregate data about either Bill Gates or Windows 8, which is a shame, but it should still be fun to play with.
It’s a terrible code name, but at least it describes the functionality 😉 If it could pull from Twitter, I’d be head over heels, but I know they’re pretty stingy about granting access to their api.