Methods and systems for smart adapters in a social media content analytics environment

1. A method of retrieving social media content metrics from a plurality of websites using a smart adapter, comprising:

constructing a respective plug-in for each of said websites;

constructing a database of M plug-ins corresponding to M websites, respectively, where M is a non-zero integer;

selecting one of said plug-ins from said database;

feeding said selected plug-in into said multi-site adapter to thereby customize the adapter for the selected plug-in; and

applying the customized multi-site adapter to a particular one of said websites corresponding to said selected plug-in to facilitate retrieving said metrics.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein said adapter comprises N tags, each corresponding to a unique one of said metrics, respectively, where N is a non-zero integer.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein each of said plug-ins comprises a Java script object notation (JSON) string.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein each of said JSON strings comprises N fields, wherein each of said N fields corresponds to a respective one of said N tags.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein at least one of said N fields in each of said JSON strings is in a regular expression (regex) format.

6. The method of claim 2 , wherein constructing said database comprises constructing an M×N database comprising M Java script object notation (JSON) strings, each having N fields.

7. The method of claim 6 , where N is in the range of 5 to 50, and M is a positive integer.

8. The method of claim 2 , wherein each of said tags corresponds to one of the following metrics: total comment count; top level comment count; author; date; number of unique authors; and number of likes.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising monitoring said websites to detect a change in the hyper text markup language (HTML) code relating to said metrics.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein monitoring comprises polling said websites to determine whether a predetermined metric has changed.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein polling comprises comparing a current value of said predetermined metric to a previously stored value of said predetermined metric.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein comparing comprises comparing said current and said previous values for an inactive post.

13. The method of claim 9 , further comprising re-configuring the plug-in for those websites for which a change in the HTML code relating to said metrics is detected.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein constructing a respective plug-in comprises defining the location and characterization of said metrics for a particular one of said plurality of websites.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein constructing a respective plug-in comprises writing a regular expression (regex) pattern for each of said metrics.

16. A system for retrieving media analytics from a plurality of websites, comprising:

a multi-site adapter module configured to be dynamically customized to access each one of the plurality of websites;

a database comprising a plurality of plug-ins corresponding to said plurality of websites, respectively; and

an application configured to retrieve a predetermined one of said plug-ins from said database and feed said predetermined plug-in into said adapter module to dynamically reconfigure the adapter module and thereby facilitate capturing said media analytics from a specified one of the plurality of websites corresponding to said predetermined plug-in.

17. The system of claim 16 , wherein said multi-site adapter comprises computer code embodied in a computer readable medium.

18. The system of claim 16 , wherein said system comprises an interactive user interface for display on a computer monitor.

19. A smart adapter for use with a database of plug-ins, each plug-in being associated with a corresponding website, for retrieving social media content metrics from said websites, the adapter comprising:

a first module configured to select one of said plug-ins from said database;

a second module configured to process the contents of said selected plug-in to thereby customize the adapter in accordance with the selected plug-in; and

a third module for retrieving said metrics from one of said websites using said processed contents;

wherein said first, second, and third modules comprise an integrated, non-transitory computer code base stored on a computer readable medium.

20. The adapter of claim 19 , wherein:

each of said plug-ins comprise a Java script object notation (JSON) string having a plurality of regular expression (regex) patterns corresponding to a respective one of said metrics;

said adapter comprises a plurality of fields corresponding to said regex patterns, respectively; and

said adapter is configured to feed said regex patterns into said fields.