My ears are burning, all 729-million of them.

Well, that number is from 2004 so I’m likely to have more ears by now and thanks to Watchlister I can tap into a large number of the conversations being had about my products and services. No, Watchlister is not surveillance software - it’s online reputation management. Do you have a brand, a company, a product or a service? Do you want to know what people online are saying? Then Watchlister is for you.

At a glance Watchlister is a mentions aggregator; though if you don’t bother getting closer you miss some of the best features of the service: better results. If you care about reputation management then you’re already using services like Google Alerts. The problem with Google Alerts is that you get pointed at the same mentions; Watchlister on the other hand, removes duplicate mentions from your results and reports so you rarely get pointed at the same mentions repeatedly. In addition to the automatic filtering Watchlister allows you to create filters based on url. With Watchlister’s easy to use interface you simply create a comma separated list of urls (both full and partial) and your “watchlist” results will no longer include mentions from that source. This is handy if you don’t want your own blog or sites you create content for tarnishing your mentions listing and frankly the feature is a must have if you are a prolific content producer.

Signing up for the service is easy and fast and free accounts allow for three watchlists. If you need more, up to 10, you can sign up for a pro account or if you’re a OS X user you can download the dashboard widget and. be upgraded for free. The OS X widget, like any other well written widget, is completely integrated into your dashboard and provides you with a quick view of your watchlists. One feature I found missing from the widget is the ability to edit watchlists directly without a visit to the website.

Overall, it’s a great tool and offers a lot of features. I’ll be doing a fuller review of the reporting interface, the website and the widget as I use the tool more to get a handle on my own brand and see how it does with brands that I’m already familiar with.