Member Article

Professionals attend launch of 'mood matching' automated software

Social media professionals gathered last night at Manchester’s Rise (formerly Escalator) on Deansgate to mark the launch of Sociomole, a new social media software platform which can assess the ’mood’ of social media users and respond automatically in the most human-like way possible 24/7, 365 days a year.

The launch is the culmination of 18 months’ development work and a six-figure investment by North West-based parent company Sociosciences Limited, which is backed by leading technology entrepreneur and non-exec Chairman Professor Paul Morrissey.

He said: “This software has the potential to revolutionise the way businesses and professionals respond to conversation on social media. There’s nothing else on the market to my knowledge currently that provides this level of sophistication and automation for social media marketers.”

Launching to 15millon Twitter users, but with other platforms to come,Sociomole matches Twitter postings for pre-determined key phrases in conversations or mentions relevant to the user’s business.

It then analyses tweets to identify one of eight emotional states; sadness, trust, anger, joy, surprise, disgust, fear and anticipation, and replies having chosen the most appropriate response to match the ‘mood’ of the Twitter user.

Tom Cheesewright from Book of the Future, who spoke at the event last night, said this had multiple applications. He said: “For consumer-facing businesses like banks, for example, Sociomole could be set up to deliver immediate ‘we are on it’ type messages to multiple angry tweeters in the middle of a crisis. Leaving real people time then to engage further down the line.”

Jonathan Welsh, Associate Director at Havas PR UK in Manchester said: “Sociomole looks really good for all those concerned with monitoring and reacting to customer-facing activity on social media feeds.”

Although Sociomole performs its multiple tasks in a fraction of a second, the simple-to-use software can be told to pause before sending a mood matched response and/or allow for human intervention, mimicking the natural pause in a Twitter conversation.

Stuart Burn, Managing Director of Sociomole developer Sociosciences Limited, said: “Developers have been trying to make automated response more human for years, but Sociomole pushes the boundaries of this technology.

“During our testing we have seen people have a conversation with Sociomole without realising it’s a conversation with a computer, it’s that life-like.

Professor Paul Morrissey added: “We are not trying to hide automation we know that social media is all about building human relationships. But we also know by using automation at the right time, with the right message, we extend human reach and capability and this will become the way we manage social media in the future.”

Stuart Burn again: “Sociomole is a powerful tool in the marketing armoury of any business. It never sleeps, and mines social media 24/7, 365 days a year, for whatever you want. That could be unearthing new business leads, protecting brands, looking for new recruits, launching and promoting new products or events.”

The software, which includes a full suite of analytical tools, evolves as the user becomes more experienced, refining their campaigns and fine tuning Sociomole’s response criteria.

Early sales interest has been encouraging and the software has a growing set of early adopters who are providing a future development hit list.

On the marketplace Stuart says the system will be reviewed by businesses alongside existing scheduling software like Hootsuite, but notes that Sociomole does so much more for Twitter users.

“Social media users have already accepted a degree of automation through scheduling, but we have now added sentiment analysis and key ‘human’ features to an automated process which changes the game.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by James Welton .