Since launching Geeks Have Landed back in October, I’ve had no way of tracking how much people were talking about the site on social networks, and how often it was happening. I use Jetpack to count which URL my visitors come from but it fails to identify who is tweeting about the site or how many people are responding to the articles I publish. Part of the reason behind this is URL shorteners which means I can’t do a quick search for ‘geeks have landed’ in Twitter. This isn’t a big issue, but as I’m sure any blog owner will tell you, it’s nice to read the praise your website is getting on social networks.
Last month while I was browsing ICS Holo-themed applications on XDA, I found ‘Mentions‘. I downloaded it without really knowing what it did or how it did it, as I was more focused on stocking my newly ICS themed CM9 Desire S with a bunch of applications to fit it’s design.
What Mentions does is simple. It monitors any links from social networks guiding people to your site. It covers Reddit, Twitter and Google+ and alerts you every time somebody links to the site, even if they have used a URL shortener like Bit.ly.
Unfortunately it doesn’t support Facebook, which is understandable as it protects it’s users privacy a lot more than Twitter and Reddit.
The push feature means that you don’t have to keep refreshing to see if somebody has mentioned your site, you will be told when somebody does.
Is anybody aware of a iOS or PC equivalent of Mentions? If so please leave a comment below.
