A part-time Algonquin professor has created a site that collects real-time data based on social media.
TrendifyLive is an Ottawa-based site that develops and markets analytics software that collects data, process-analyzes and provides insights about brands.
Users are able to use real-time data collected through social media and share the important and useful data.
“The software is in the cloud,” explained TrendifyLive’s CEO and founder Alem Legesse. “It addresses the needs of large corporations that wish to monitor and keep tabs on their corporate brands as well as municipalities and governments that wish to keep the public safe.”
Some of the applications TrendifyLive offers are crisis response, brand reputation monitoring, political campaigns and news and market research.
Users are able to select their own terms about what they want to monitor. For example, a user can type in Mayor Jim Watson’s Twitter handle, choose a timeline and the system will flag the positive and negatives — which shows in red and green. The system will also show the top 10 associated tweets with the person selected and the person’s, in this case Jim Watson’s, top five tweets in that timeframe.
“It is going to collect everything associated with Jim Watson,” said Legesse. “[It will show] who attacked him and who said positive [things] about him.”
With this data Watson would be able to track what is being said, if he is in the positive or negative section and he would be able to act quickly and address the issues as they occur — even if the users delete their tweets.
Before the creation of TrendifyLive, Legesse had lived in Africa where he received a scholarship which allowed him to study economics and chemical engineering for five years in the Czech Republic.
“We were a diverse group of people,” he said. “We were sitting and talking about different kinds of culture and that’s where I learned about the reading culture.”
Legesse explained that what he learned the most from the reading culture were math and chemistry.
“My future life after that was shaped by that environment,” he explained. “I was surrounded by extremely smart people who were aware of how the world works.”
Legesse credits his work ethic, honesty and habits to his experience in the Czech Republic. Unfortunately, he felt that he wasn’t suited for that environment so he came to Canada to get his masters in computer science and mathematics at Carleton Universty.
Afterwards, he was hired as a software designer for the global Canadian company in Ottawa.
“I enjoyed working with my team, the projects and the rewards. I was very dedicated I loved the culture of this company because they cared about personal growth,” he said.
During the economic downturn of 2009-2012 Legesse was out of work because the company had gone bankrupt.
“Following that experience,” explained Legesse. “I started to search for something that could give me a chance to share my knowledge, learn from others and realize my full potential.”
This is when he thought of TrendifyLive.
The project started around 2012 with the first prototype in 2013.
Legesse and his team had the opportunity to work with the City of Ottawa and their staff to test TrendifyLive on their infrastructure to work out any issues, as well as with Algonquin College’s office of innovation and applied research, who provided support and funding to hire more co-op students.
Currently, the TrendifyLive team is reaching out to all early adopters within the Ottawa and Canada business community to use and provide feedback to help refine the software and build a solution that best fits users’ needs.
The goal is that in 18 months they will go global.