START-UP VETERAN Charlie Ardagh has launched his latest venture Trackalyse.comwhich enables its customers to track, analyse and compare any fan pages on Facebook.

The service was formally launched at the Measurement.ieconference in the National College of Ireland this week.

Speaking at the conference, Mr Ardagh said: “Businesses and organisations that use Facebook as one of the main touch points for their brand can only truly know how good a job they are doing if they can benchmark their results against their competitors.”

Trackalyse uses Facebook’s application programming interface which allows third-party developers to pull data from the site to create their own apps.

"It's like a compete.comfor Facebook; you can compare your growth in fans or engagement to others in your sector," said Mr Ardagh.

“With our tool you can see data about your competitors that you would only get if you were an administrator on their page.”

The system also highlights which posts from competitors are attracting a large amount of comments or “likes”.

“Posts generally have a short life. They disappear down the newsfeed after four or five hours so it can be hard to see what’s getting engagement,” said Ardagh.

Trackalyse is currently offering a free trial of their basic Trackalyse package. Pricing for the service ranges from €19-€649 per month depending on how many fans the company’s has.

Over 100 companies from Europe, the US and South America are using the service, said Mr Ardagh, but the initial sales and marketing efforts would focus on Ireland and the UK.

Mr Ardagh founded a number of telecoms and media companies in the last 13 years, including Leap Broadband, a wireless internet service provider which was acquired by Magnet Networks.