Called “Looking Glass,” the product is still in prototype and will only be available to a few companies in the near term. It sends e-mail alerts when social media activity picks up considerably. The sentiment (i.e., negative or positive) of that chatter and the influence level of the content creator are reported in the alert. Digital flow charts show what days of the week generate the most activity on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and other social media sites.

But interweaving social media data with reporting from other campaign channels may turn out be Microsoft’s most significant contribution to the already mature field of social media analytics. Feeds from social media sites can be connected to other business elements like customer databases, CRM centers and sales data within an organization. The data integrate via Microsoft’s enterprise platforms like Outlook and Sharepoint.

A handful or so companies will begin testing Looking Glass in the coming weeks. According to a spokesperson, the company hopes to release it to the broader marketing public sometime next year.

While testing the system during the past nine months, Marty Taylor Collins, a group marketing manager for Microsoft, said the information acquired on at least two occasions saved her department from a serious misstep. First, the tool halted her team’s plan to discontinue an ad campaign when it helped them discover that a lead character had quietly become popular. In another instance, a PR disaster was averted during the beta-test release of Windows 7, after a system crashed just after launch.

“We love to push out content and [social media] is a great channel for that,” she said. “But if you are not using it as a listening tool, then you are really not getting the complete benefit of a Twitter or a Facebook because a part of [your] job is to watch the conversations on the wall.”

As a possible example for everyday organizational uses, an electronics manufacturer could find out if an angry blogger is at all connected to one of its bigger distributor or retailer customers. Or an automaker could overlay its sales and support data information in the tool and analyze those factors with what’s being said about its brand or car models at Facebook.

More on the Microsoft blog.

According a press release issued by uSocial, who markets products like a “$1,000 Twitter followers for $87” package, “Twitter has recently moved to [shut us down], by claiming [we're] ’spamming.’” uSocial takes issue with this claim, saying, “the definition of spam is using electronic messaging to send unsolicited communication and as we don’t use Twitter for this, the claims are false.”

Last week, Mashable received press release from uSocial that not only claimed that the company “sold” Twitter followers, it also highlighted the fact that they ignored a “Cease and Desist” order from social news site Digg for selling votes. Twitter moved swiftly to prevent this company from unethically inflating followers.

While it’s good to know that Twitter is cracking down on shady marketing companies, this also opens up another issue: How far will marketers go to inflate their metrics within the social media space? While those of us who work within social media channels understand that measurement/metrics differ from advertising (e.g., the quality of interactions, engaging with key influencers, sustained conversations over time), many traditional marketers adhere to the antiquated notion that “more is more” when it comes to the number of users. It’s not the number of followers/friends/fans; it’s the meaningful relationships built over time. Social media is a long-term strategy, not a quick fix.

The challenge is to educate traditional marketers to inform them that it’s not quantity that’s important within social media; it’s the quality — that is, communicating with audiences in an authentic, relevant and engaging way over time.