I am on vacation, but gotta make a quick comment on some pretty big news in our industry. It was announced this week that TNS (Taylor Nelson Sofres), one of the largest market research firms in the world, purchased Cymfony, one of the market leaders in IWOM in the US. Cymfony will now become part of TNS Media Intelligence.

This follows Nielsen Co.'s (formerly VNU) last year's purchase of US market leaders Buzzmetrics and Inteliseek (now Nielsen Buzzmetrics).

It is clear that the IWOM industry is increasingly on the radar for brands and the agencies that serve them.

A nice listing of almost all the companies in the industry worldwide can be found here

A nice overview of the industry (in the US) can be found here (PDF).

More on the transaction here.