We recently ran a poll to find the most popular social media monitoring services in use today. Over 1,450 votes were cast (thanks!). The results are fascinating, not least because one of the most popular wasn't even on our radar, and the most high profile firms didn't attract the most votes. So here we go.

Total votes – 1468

1. Viral Heat – 511 votes (35%)

2. ListenLogic – 265 votes (18%)

3. Biz360 – 204 votes (14%)

4= Radian6 – 121 votes (8%)

4= Filtrbox – 121 votes (8%)

Viral Heat emerged as the clear winner with over a third of the votes cast. ListenLogic came an impressive second despite the disadvantage of not being on the list. I'll stick my hand up and say this is a new service to me (sorry guys) but obviously one which companies should evaluate when selecting their paid monitoring platform. It was interesting to me that high profile Radian6 was not more popular and that Scout Labs was unplaced. In fact, Sysomos is worthy of mention securing 101 votes, again despite the fact it was unlisted. Congratulations too to Filtrbox for making the top 5, alongside Radian6.

So what can we conclude from this? First, judging by the scale and range of response, there is a lot of interest in the monitoring space and the field is hotly contended. Second, the traditional services you might have used a few years ago to search for news like Factiva, Vocus or Lexis-Nexis are not being deployed here. Third, we should check out winner Viral Heat, but there is a long list of services which others comfortably use – in fact 25 were named in the Other category.

I think this is a good thing for brands – the competition will encourage innovation and lower prices. For instance, no single service can be used yet on a global basis, so there is huge opportunity for each of these companies. Thanks once again to all who voted and shared their opinion, and well done to all those in the top 5.