Social media has given consumers a voice, and brands are extremely concerned about how detrimental a bad review can be once it is posted online. But while this has taken the spotlight and has become an important, top-of-mind issue on marketing teams, it’s vital not to ignore the simple word-of-mouth review. Our Technographics® research shows that almost half of all consumers have complained directly to a family member or friend versus the mere 3% who have posted on a web site like Yelp/Trip advisor, or the 1% who have tweeted their complaints.

Listening software has made it easy for organizations to understand the latitude of negative feelings about their companies and brands and has given them some tools to directly address a complaint online by responding to an individual. It is nearly impossible to harness the conversations going on offline among groups of friends, although the numbers show that the effects of these talks are more widespread than the ones online — especially when you take into account that research shows that consumers trust friends and family most when making decisions.

Here we are again.  As we approach Labor Day, less than three weeks after IBM announced its agreement to acquire Unica (see my blog post with Suresh Vittal here), comScore announced yesterday that it has acquired the venerable European Web analytics vendor Nedstat.

Total cash and stock consideration for the purchase is valued at approximately $36.7 million USD.  Additionally, nearly the entire Nedstat staff, numbering about 120, will stay on at comScore.

Official information is available through comScore, the comScore corporate blog, and the regulatory filing for those of you who are financially minded.  I also had the opportunity to speak with comScore CEO and co-founder Magid Abraham, who generously took time out of a very hectic day for a call.

The acquisition is predicated on the following benefits:

• Geographic expansion. Nedstat provides an established European presence from which to serve current and prospective comScore clients in the region.
• Product enhancement. comScore will enhance its Unified Digital Measurement (UDM) platform with Nedstat technology.
• Deeper client relationships. The opportunity to upsell comScore’s existing client base with new and expanded product offerings.

Later this month, Bank of America will roll out a mobile payments trial to its employees in the New York metropolitan market. One of the primary goals of the pilot is to understand the user experience expectations of potential mobile payments customers, according to Michael Upton, Bank of America’s executive leading the initiative. The trial involves outfitting users’ phones with a microSD card that supports contactless payments based on near field communications (NFC) technology.

This is not the first large trial of contactless payments. Citi, Chase, and other large US banks have invested millions of dollars in trials of NFC programs launched by MasterCard and Visa. These efforts, though, have relied primarily on chips embedded in the user’s credit or debit card. Citi earlier this year also introduced an NFC sticker that users can apply to their mobile phones, alleviating the need for a physical card. The Bank of America pilot takes this a step further by including a mobile wallet application that can support multiple payment cards. Users could, for example, make contactless payments from their Bank of America, Citi, Chase, and American Express accounts all through a single mobile app.

Another day, another announcement of social media M&A. Today, Alterian announced its acquistion of Intrepid, a social media consultancy. With this move Alterian adds further professional services strength to its existing listening platform, SM2. Congratulations to Intrepid and Alterian.

I reviewed Alterian's SM2 product in our recent Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms 2010, highlighting many strengths, but observed an area that most needed improvement: the level of services offerings and overall consulting. Combining Intrepid's existing consulting team with the SM2 product will address this gap well, improving Alterian's product line. I spoke to the Alterian team and learned that this move mainly comes as a result of increased client requests for professional services related to social media analytics.

Here at Forrester, we've seen the same growing demand for professional services around listening initiatives. Many clients ask about building, or improving, their programs but lack the internal resources -- social media knowledge, listening expertise, measurement skills, and, most importantly, time -- to go from passively collecting social media data to improving their marketing or business goals from insights within the data. As a result of the growing client interest, we recently published a report on the topic: "How Listening Services Support Social Intelligence." This report outlines the many ways consulting teams assist in the listening process -- from training and support to customized reports and strategic planning -- and tells Customer Intelligence professionals what kind of help they'll benefit from the most.