Susan SmithRecently, GISCafe Voice spoke with R.J. Talyor, vice president of Product Management at Geofeedia. Geofeedia is a patented, cloud-based platform, which searches, analyzes and monitors real time social media posts from any geographic location globally.
In a couple of recent GeoFeedia case studies, the platform has been used to uncover drug use and distribution among teens at parties in the Los Angeles area, involving the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the FDA. In one other instance, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men’s Division Basketball Tournament was already very active in social media, but needed a better way to cut through the noise on social media and discover and engage with social media users posting at specific locations of interest across Indianapolis. They were able to get up and running quickly on the GeoFeedia platform and draw perimeters around key locations, from which they gathered rich geo-tagged social media data in a matter of minutes. Consequently, the team was able to use GeoFeedia to make sure the fans had a good fan experience, and that counterfeit passes were aborted, as well as that tournament title sponsors receive high returns on their investment. GISCafe: How quickly can Geofeedia make something useful out of the data it picks up?R.J. Talyor: Immediately. Customers are able to discover, analyze and take action on posts since Geofeedia surfaces this content in about 15 seconds after it’s posted.GISCafe Voice: When you say it is a “social listening tool,” what does that mean exactly?R.J. Talyor: Geofeedia enables organizations to discover social media conversations within locations that matter.GISCafe Voice: Where does the data come from?R.J. Talyor: Geofeedia aggregates publicly-available social data from the top social networks (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc.), and includes text, images and videos shared.GISCafe Voice: What do customers do with the data that they glean from the Geofeedia tool?R.J. Talyor: Geofeedia customers range from news organizations (e.g. CNN, BBC, Mashable) looking to discover breaking news to public safety organizations gaining situational awareness in a crisis to marketers wanting to better engage with their customers.GISCafe Voice: What will customers be able to do with the updated tool that they could not do before?R.J. Talyor: Geofeedia customers have access to ten new core capabilities including the ability to aggregate data across multiple locations, track sentiment in one or more locations, and access this data on-the-go with the mobile app.GISCafe Voice: Where does the data usually go after it has been compiled – and how is it sorted, for use?R.J.Talyor: Geofeedia data is archived for customers within the cloud for additional analysis.