Philly company injects logic into social media listening

When national casual dining chain Red Robin saw a petition circulating online from customers who demanded veggie burgers be offered at its restaurants, the company was floored. Red Robin, in fact, served veggie burgers, and immediately realized that it was imperative to know what people were saying online–and in a hurry.

The story is the exclamation point on ListenLogic’s rapidly developing
story. The virtual company, which has headquarters in Philadelphia and
an office in Silicon Valley, Calif., received $250,000 in funding from
Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern PA after an earlier
$125,000 investment.

“There are over 150 million blogs and millions are tweeting every day,” says Vince Schiavone, ListenLogic’s co-founder and managing partner. “There’s always been an interest in learning about consumers, but now those consumers are defining the brands.”

The company’s RESONATE listening platform does more than just social media monitoring. It is a sort of social media “intelligence” tool that processes various online messages into a comprehensive, enterprise-wide report covering PR, legal, product development, marketing, customer service and business intelligence, among others. ListenLogic has consciously bridged the gap between Silicon Valley and Philly en route to utilizing supercomputing technology to compile real-time data on a client.

The company, which employs 10 in Philly and expects to quadruple that number in the coming year or so, has raised more than $1 million from angel investors. Its clients include Digitas Health and GSI Commerce locally.

“Today you have to build a company in stealth mode,” says Shicavone. “We spent 18 months building this technology to have a very powerful skimming technology. Our CEO has eight patents in supercomputing. We’ll be profitable.”

Source: Vince Schiavone, ListenLogic
Writer: Joe Petrucci