For about a year, I have been using Radian6 that I selected after a rather exhaustive evaluation.  Lately, I am less pleased with the tool and have begun to look again at the old set and search for new ones.

I started to put together a list of questions that never seem to be answered up front on sites, in demos or in the first round of sales discussions. or demos. I put this list together and then just today I found another helpful list from Scout Labs. The Scout Labs list is longer than mine and very good.  But, I have some others as well.

• What are the content sources? Are they RSS feeds or paid content sources such as Factiva, Boardreader or others?
• How often and when is content imported? Basically, how quickly will it appear from when it is published?
• Is there a method to create “watchlists” for monitoring a set of sites?
• Can we place in a list of sites/feeds to be searched to be sure the content is included in the monitoring?
• Is there a way to check to be sure a desired source is monitored?
• Is the cost we see simply based on monitored items? Is there a limit on the number of profiles, user accounts, searches, or other aspects?
• If we end or pause a search, can we retain the content/monitoring from where this halted. If so, for how long?
• Are the monitoring volume fees based on new content per month? Or, is historical content billed.