Social BI, or social intelligence, is the analysis of data from social sources such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Social BI is often used with traditional reporting and BI methods to help organizations make better data-driven decisions.
Companies use social intelligence for insight on how consumers think and behave. As social technology matures, social intelligence will take on a broader role, including informing competitive strategy. Social media can help companies overcome some of the limits of older intelligence-gathering approaches. This typically involves collected information from a range of public and copyrighted sources, drawing out insights using time-tested analytic methods.