Union Metrics debuts search engine that gives you access to Twitter’s entire archive

Union Metrics today expanded its suite of tools to help marketers interact with social media data. Called Union Metrics Echo, the service enables businesses to search Twitter’s entire archive in order to make real-time decisions around marketing campaigns.

Company chief executive Hayes Davis said in a statement: “We created Union Metrics Echo to make the hundreds of billions of tweets in the Twitter archive instantly accessible to marketers so they can answer important business questions and make better decisions in ways that simply weren’t possible before.”

Users can input keywords into the search engine, which will display a count of the tweet volume of each of those keywords or phrases over time. Instead of simple brand monitoring, you can now look at conversations people are having that may be relevant to your brand. Volkswagen, for example, could see the moment the first tweet mentioned its name and also when the story broke about its vehicle emission problem. Then, the company could see a visual representation of how chatter has increased or decreased over time.

In addition to this visualization, Union Metrics Echo provides a more detailed look at each query. This exportable report provides specifics such as tweet reach, tweet exposure, and the number of contributors to that particular topic. Additionally, you can scan by the top URLs shared, as well as by most popular hashtags. This operates something like Google Analytics, but with Twitter-specific data.

Currently, Union Metrics Echo doesn’t analyze tweet sentiment, but Davis told VentureBeat that the data can help give marketers an idea of the overall trajectory of the conversation, which could eventually highlight the positive or negative data contained therein.

Data can be exported, but it cannot be instantly integrated into third-party services (like Salesforce). Davis admitted that the intent is for users stick with its suite of products.

At first glance, this service appears to be just a nice search engine, but Davis pointed out that it can offer much more. Companies can proactively scan to see what people have been saying about them over time, thus ensuring that their social marketing campaigns are on point. This data can also give businesses tools to counteract negative opinion, if necessary.

Although available to all Social Suite subscribers today, the service costs extra. For $500 per month, companies can access up to 30 days’ worth of data from Twitter’s archive. For $1,000 per month, Union Metrics’ Echo 365 plan grants unlimited access to up to a year’s worth of data. Finally, for $2,000 per month, the company’s Echo Full Archive plan grants full access to everything.