As much as there is a multitude of social media sites outhere, there equally seems to be a great deal of tools to help you figure out what’s going on with your brand names, reputations, etc etc. So we’ve picked a few of the best free apps to help you measure, monitor and generally navigate your way through the social media forest.

1. HowSociable? – A simple, free, tool that can measure the visibility of your brand on the web across 22 metrics http://howsociable.com
2. TweetScan – search for words on Twitter http://tweetscan.com
3. TweetMeme – View the most popular Twitter threads occurring now. http://tweetmeme.com
4. Addict-o-matic – A nice search engine that aggregates rss feeds, allowing you to quickly see the areas where a brand is lacking in presence http://addictomatic.com
5. Posterous – Posterous is the dead simple way to put anything online using email. http://posterous.com
6. Viral Video Chart – Displays top 20 most-viewed video (1, 7, 365 days). Includes view counts and charting.http://viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com
7. Pixelpipe – Upload photos, video, and audio files once through the Pixelpipe Media Gateway and distribute your content across over 100+ social networks, photo/video sites, blogs, and other online services. http://pixelpipe.com
8. eKstreme – is a keyword research tool with one simple aim: to find out who’s talking about a certain keyword.http://ekstreme.com/buzz
9. Keotag – making it easy for you to track if someone tags a page using your company or product name.http://www.keotag.com
10. Social Mention – search aggregation for various sources, from blogs to social sites. http://www.socialmention.com