OVERLAND PARK, KAN. – Social media business intelligence company Spiral16 announced today that Ken Miner has been named as its new Vice President of Sales.

Miner’s extensive experience in business operations, sales planning, strategy development, and marketing oversight will increase company growth and help expand Spiral16’s market base into new verticals.

“I’m excited about the value that Spiral16 can bring to businesses by providing them with relevant and qualified Internet data,” Miner says. “I also look forward to continuing to foster and grow relationships with the company’s current partners.”

Miner is recognized for a broad range of entrepreneurial, professional sales, and leadership skills. He has a proven ability to identify, integrate, and nurture the diverse talents of team members to increase company growth and improve client satisfaction.

Recently as a managing partner at IT support and management company Technical Velocity, Miner changed company culture and environment from a fix-it-only IT organization to a to professional customer service organization that is focused on client satisfaction.

Spiral16 offers a powerful Internet monitoring platform to listen, measure, and visualize online presence. This comprehensive, customizable tool collects more than just social media sites, allowing users the ability to analyze data on any given topic in near-real time, including automated sentiment classification and semantic analysis.

Superior quality of data and consultative customer service are among the company’s differentiators. Another unique aspect is a 3D visual-mapping feature that makes it possible to identify hubs of influence and previously unknown connections and patterns in online communities.

Online:
www.spiral16.com

About Spiral16
Spiral16 is a social media technology company that helps companies uncover patterns within large sets of data. Spiral16’s social media monitoring solution is a highly powerful software-as-a-service platform that monitors sentiment, identifies key influencers, and visualizes online data in near-real time. Based in Overland Park, Kan., some of Spiral16’s clients include professional sports franchises; major motion picture studios; biotech companies; and globally recognized advertising, marketing, and new media agencies.

Spiral16:
Eric Melin
Manager
Marketing and Communications
(913) 944-4285
eric.melin@spiral16.com

OVERLAND PARK, KAN. – Social media technology company Spiral16 announced today that Tracy Panko has been named as its new CEO. A strategic leader with a clear sense of vision, Panko will sharpen Spiral16’s brand message, propel forward development of the company’s premier social media monitoring solution, and expand the platform’s subscribers.

“Spiral 16 has developed Spark—a tool for monitoring and measuring social media that has strengths beyond its competition,” Panko says. “I look forward to telling the world about this robust tool and developing additional business opportunities for its use in vertical markets.”

Panko is a creative thinker who, as the CEO of both established companies and start-up operations, has launched over $50 million of successful new products, developed specific market-growth strategies, negotiated strategic alliances, and lead nationally dispersed sales teams to profitable growth. Recently as a partner with Kansas City-based Mid America Capital, she led the acquisition and growth of multiple companies.

Spiral16’s Spark is a powerful social media monitoring software tool. With Spark, users can analyze data on any given topic in near-real time, including automated sentiment and semantic analysis. One thing sets that Spark apart from other tools is the demonstrably consistent quality of data being shared with the customer. Spark’s results are high on relevancy and low on spam. Another unique aspect is Spark’s virtualization—a 3D visual mapping feature that makes it possible to identify hubs of influence and previously unknown connections and patterns in online communities.

Online:
www.spiral16.com

About Spiral16
Spiral16 is a social media technology company that helps companies uncover patterns within large sets of data. Spark, Spiral16’s social media monitoring solution, is a highly powerful software-as-a-service platform that monitors sentiment, identifies key influencers, and visualizes online data in near-real time. Based in Overland Park, Kan., some of Spiral16’s clients include professional sports franchises; major motion picture studios; biotech companies; and globally recognized advertising, marketing, and new media agencies.

Spiral16:
Eric Melin
Social Media Manager
(913) 944-4285
eric.melin@spiral16.com

LAWRENCE, KAN. – The World Company announced today that they will be using Spiral16’s social media monitoring software, Spark, as part of their social media monitoring and analytics packages.

“We’re excited to work with a local company that’s providing unique technology in social media,” World Company Social Media Manager Ben Smith said. “The World Company has a strong tradition of innovation in information gathering, and a partnership with Spiral16 continues our commitment to bringing our community and clients information using the best technology available.”

Along with their news and advertising services through print, television and online, the World Company offers local and regional businesses social media services and resources through a dedicated social media department, including strategy, monitoring, analytics, development, training, and account management.

Spiral16’s Spark is a powerful social media monitoring software tool. With Spark, users can analyze data on any given topic in near-real time, including automated sentiment and semantic analysis. What sets Spark apart from other tools is its virtualization—a 3D visual mapping feature. With the virtualization, it’s possible to identify hubs of influence and previously unknown connections and patterns in online communities.

About the World Company
The World Company was founded more than 100 years ago with the launch of a daily newspaper, which became the Lawrence Journal-World. In 1995, the Lawrence Journal-World became one of the first daily newspapers in the country to formally begin publishing on the Internet. It has been featured in an NPR series titled Convergence Capital USA, and described by the New York Times as the “newspaper of the future.” Today, nine of 10 local households turn to the company’s newspaper, cable television, or Internet editions to receive information. In the fall of 2001, the World Company became one of the first media groups to combine its print, television and Internet news-gathering into one newsroom. Along with the Lawrence Journal-World and a related group of community newspapers, The World Company consists of cable and broadcast television and news operations; a cutting edge DOCSIS 3.0-based cable network; magazine publishing; commercial software development; and a broad range of news, media and technology services.

Online:
www.ljworld.com
www.kusports.com
www.lawrence.com
www.sunflowerbroadband.com

About Spiral16
Spiral16 is an informatic software company that helps companies uncover patterns within large sets of data. Spark, Spiral16’s social media monitoring solution, is a highly powerful software-as-a-service platform that monitors sentiment, identifies key influencers, and visualizes online data in near-real time. Based in Overland Park, Kan., some of Spiral16’s clients include professional sports franchises; major motion picture studios; biotech companies; and globally recognized advertising, marketing, and new media agencies.

Online:
www.spiral16.com

Contact

The World Company:
Ben Smith
Social Media Manager
bsmith@ljworld.com
(785) 423-4538

Spiral16:
Eric Melin
Social Media Manager
(913) 944-4285
eric.melin@spiral16.com

[OVERLAND PARK, KAN.] – Barkley announced today that it has selected Spiral16’s software Spark to monitor the social media space for its clients. The Kansas City-based advertising agency plans to use Spiral16’s capabilities to increase its social media listening, engagement and strategy practice.

Barkley will utilize Spiral16 to monitor the social media space for its clients, as well as monitor key trends and consumer attitudes across a wide array of topics.

“We’re very excited about our partnership with an agency as highly respected as Barkley and their innovative approach to social media.” Spiral16 President David Goode said. “It only adds to the excitement to work with a business based in our own backyard.”

Spiral16’s Spark is a web-based software that helps global brands monitor, manage, and analyze their social media presence. The system allows companies to improve customer service, enhance brand reputation, gather transparent competitive intelligence, identify key influencers, and understand conversations with positive and negative sentiment. All this data is then visualized in a 3D, interactive mapping tool.

“Monitoring, measuring and monetizing our efforts on behalf of our clients in the social media space has become a key area of importance, especially as advertisers look for more relevant ways to interact with their customers,” said Chris Dickey, SVP of Insight/Impact at Barkley, “In fact, Forrester just recently released a study that said four in five U.S. online adults use social media at least once a month, and half participate in social networks like Facebook. Spiral16 allows us deeper insight to how our brands are being talked about, engaged and interacted with, so that we can optimize and adjust in near real time as part of our overall integrated marketing strategy.”

In addition to social media monitoring, Spiral16’s informatic software has the capability to analyze other large and complex data sets. This allows businesses to discover hidden patterns and identify trends in customer service, point-of-sale, call center transcripts, qualitative market research, and other unstructured data sets.

Media Contact

Eric Melin, Spiral16
(913) 944-4285
eric.melin@spiral16.com

About Spiral16

Spiral16 is a software company working in social technology and social media monitoring. Spark, Spiral16’s social media monitoring solution, is a highly powerful software-as-a-service platform that monitors sentiment, identifies key influencers, and visualizes online data in near-real time. Based in Overland Park, Kan. some of Spiral16’s clients include NFL and NBA franchises; major motion pictures studios; and globally recognized advertising, marketing, and new media agencies.

About Barkley

Barkley is the largest employee-owned agency of its kind. Founded in 1964, the company has 325 partners offering a full range of marketing communications services including advertising, public relations, cause branding, sponsorships and events, relationship marketing, social media, design, media planning and buying, motion graphics, research and interactive marketing. Barkley has offices in Kansas City and Pittsburgh, with additional field offices across the nation. More info: www.barkleyus.com and www.barkleyREI.com

[OVERLAND PARK, KAN.] – Informatic software company Spiral16 has added a new automated sentiment classifier to the robust features of Spark, the company’s premiere web-based social media monitoring platform.

The new sentiment classifier uses statistical analysis to automatically extract informative content blocks from web pages and then employs natural language processing techniques to evaluate the average sentiment of the content.

“In developing our technology, we leveraged the latest research in sentiment analysis and opinion mining,” said Lead Software Engineer Cory Stricklin. “However, we go a step further by combining the research with proprietary techniques in order to achieve superior results.”

While the sentiment classifier automatically breaks down the sentiment of a particular URL into a positive, negative, or neutral category with accuracy comparable to that of humans, it also allows the user the ability to edit any automatic grouping. The new sentiment classifying tool is a significant step forward in Spark’s ever-advancing technology.

“We are happy with the results we achieve today, but the tool is not static,” Stricklin said. “We provide the ability for users to correct classifications with which they disagree, and our tool has the ability to learn from this and improve over time. We are still researching and developing new sentiment analysis technologies that will add novel capabilities and continually improve the performance of our service.”

The sentiment classifier is represented by two new gadgets on Spark’s customized reports page: Node Sentiment Breakdown (pictured) and Node Sentiment Line Graphs.

Spiral16’s Spark allows companies to improve customer service, enhance brand reputation, gather transparent competitive intelligence, and identify key influencers. Spark now automatically scores conversations with positive and negative sentiment and has the capability to analyze offline sets of data as well. Data is visualized in various customizable reporting options to fit companies’ specific needs, including a unique 3D interactive mapping tool.

Media Contacts

Eric Melin, Social Media Manager, Spiral16
(913) 944-4285
eric.melin@spiral16.com

About Spiral16

Spiral16 is a software company working in social technology and social media monitoring. Spark, Spiral16’s social media monitoring solution, is a highly powerful software-as-a-service platform that monitors sentiment, identifies key influencers, and visualizes online data in near-real time. Based in Overland Park, Kan., some of Spiral16’s clients include NFL and NBA franchises; major motion pictures studios; and globally recognized advertising, marketing, and new media agencies.