Microsoft has recently communicated with customers that as of the 16th of January 2019 it will no longer be offering Social Engagement or Insideview to new customers. They will, however, honour current subscriptions for the next year. If I am honest this does not come as a shock that they have discontinued these products as since they were released they have been underfunded both regarding investment of money and effort.
As part of the announcement, Microsoft has advised that they will be putting their efforts into Marketing AI for Insights which they are looking to push as the replacement for these two products.
Market Insights has been positioned as a social media powerhouse, and I suspect Microsoft is looking to take on the likes of Hoot Suite.
At first glance, the currently available version of Market Insights is not far from being what social engagement was.
Market Insights is currently able to connect to the following sources: Blogs, Disqus, Facebook, Forums, Instagram, LinkedIn, News, Reddit, Twitter and Videos (YouTube). The data gathered is run through the Azure Cognitive Services network to detect the language and sentiment of content. It will also attempt to determine the demographics of the author (Age and Sex) based on the language used. I will believe the accuracy of this when I see it.
While there are similar integration options with Dynamics 365 as there was with social engagement, I suspect that in the April release there will be a big leap of functionality for this product.
I will release more information on what is coming in the April release on the 21st of January.
