Working the Web, a cosmetics maker monitors chat rooms for mentions of rivals or its products. A local phone company in heated labor negotiations taps into the public Web sites of local chapters of the Communications Workers of America to get a peek at the union's picketing plans. The on-line insights can alter a company's strategy. Checking Web sites, he learned that a far bigger rival had scheduled a series of media events over the next few months. So his client narrowed its own campaign to a targeted local TV effort to avoid getting lost in the rival's buzz.
Some companies deploy on-line operatives of their own, but many leave the Web spying to the experts.
Bioanalytic Microsystems, a startup out of the University of Minnesota, hired Teltech to use the Web to gauge interest in a prostate cancer therapy that might improve delivery of radioactive seeds used in lieu of surgery. Dow Chemical is another customer.