Microsoft released details for Looking Glass, a tool for collecting and tracking social media data. As both aggregator and monitor, Microsoft says the tool is what companies need not just to stay abreast of what happens in their social media sites but discover actionable situations quickly.

Looking Glass is also feeding data from firms already providing detailed metrics, such as Meteor Solutions.  It s not on shelves yet, but the feature list could give hope to anyone in sales and marketing struggling to figure out how to manage the mountain of data that comes their way.

Abbey Klaassen s piece at Ad Age interviews MS executives who use all the right words. They had [a]listdaily at, Catch a mini web crisis before it erupts.

Read more at Ad Age.