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Print Edition StoriesWednesday, October 15, 2008
Crimson Hexagon taps consumers’ minds
By Mass High Tech Staff
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A Cambridge company has launched a new product designed to measure consumer opinions online.
Crimson Hexagon Inc., founded in 2007, developed a brand monitoring software capable of aggregating opinions without human analysis. The product scans blogs, chat rooms and other forms of social media forums to gather its information, company officials said.
The company has attracted an undisclosed amount of investment from angel investors, including Golden Seeds, Beacon Angels and the Angel Investor Forum in Connecticut.
Crimson Hexagon, founded by CEO Candace Fleming and chief scientist Gary King, is a Harvard University professor of government and director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Fleming is the former presidet of Icosystem Corp., a Cambridge company that develops analytical and software approaches for businesses.
Crimson Hexagon has an exclusive licensing agreement with Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development for the technology. Its product is available through consulting services, but Crimson Hexagon plans to deliver it via software as a service during 2009, officials said.
Companies using technology to track consumer behavior has risen sharply in recent years.
Last year, marketers were projected to spend more than $1.35 billion on word-of-mouth marketing, a nearly 38 percent increase over the previous year, according Stamford, Conn.-based PQ Media LLC. The spending figure is expected to increase to more than $3.7 billion in 2011 as consumers shift away from traditional media to digital media.
One-year-old Brookline-based ChatThreads Corp. developed an online service based on technology developed at Northeastern University to quantify the success or failure of ad campaigns.
The company, founded by Northeastern University assistant professor of communication studies Walter Carl, aggregates data with an application that monitors independent web content, verbal communications tracked by ChatThreads team members and online surveys of consumers.
The four-employee ChatThreads has received an undisclosed amount of funding from friends and family, Carl has said. Its customers include Boston-based BzzAgent Inc., which uses the service to do word of mouth marketing itself.
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