If you are researching a topic or want to keep track of what is being said about a certain product or brand, there is often no better place than an active Internet forum. While search engines are wonderful resources to help us locate information, where they often fail is in the immediacy of the content provided. Today's darling could be tomorrow's outcast, so keeping tabs on what's being said is imperative. The challenge of forums is that there are so many and engaging in those communities for the sake of research takes a great deal of time and effort.

Enter Dipiti (beta): from the Dipiti.com site: "Dipiti currently connects online users to 2,322 communities and 28,979,436 conversations. Dipiti does this by discovering, qualifying, and organizing thousands sites of all sizes across the web so online users can quickly and easily find the most relevant information, connect with others on communities and expert sites, and gain answers and support."

Dipiti only focuses on a few categories of interest (Health, Legal, Money, Pet Care). I conducted a search for "IRS audit" in the legal category and found only two site results. Another search however for "Flu" in the health category found a respectable 41 results from some good sites with seemingly active conversations happening.

While there is room for improvement in the depth of forum coverage, Dipiti could end up an essential part of online research for marketers.