I saw this thread a little while back:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2347428

Which shows a bunch of free API endpoints for tracking social media mentions (FB, twitter, linkedin, SU, reddit, delicious, gbuzz).

I'm not a serious developer so I coded up a Google Docs that can call the APIs for you:

https://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc?authkey=CLbYuv0E&hl=en&key=tfYPkMHydrl5Xb9Ovn7TEcA&hl=en&authkey=CLbYuv0E#gid=0

(you'll need to be logged into Google, just click file -> make a copy and then you have a your own copy of the spreadsheet to use as you want).

I wrote up a few more details about the technique here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-track-your-social-media-strategy

Hope this is useful for a few non-technical hackers :) Tom