Simply Be Agree Ongoing Commitment with WhichSocial After Successful Trial

Manchester-based WhichSocial have established a new cooperation with Simply Be, which is part of J D Williams & Company Limited. Simpy Be specialise in offering the latest fashion trends in women apparel exclusively in sizes 14-32, and have a very active following online. WhichSocial will provide their services to Simply Be in order to optimise their social media marketing on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. The social media ROI software offered by WhichSocial will help Simply Be determine how successful their Pinterest pins, Facebook posts and Tweets are in driving sales and traffic to their website. The software will also identify influencers, discover trending best sellers and the most effective social channel. Having such measurements available, Simply Be will be able to revise, and hence optimise, their social media marketing strategy.

WhichSocial is dedicated to helping Simply Be improve their social media marketing efforts by allowing Simply Be to immediately react to WhichSocial real-time alerts based on trending on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Avin Wong, WhichSocial’s Managing Director, commented, “We appreciate the opportunity to provide our services to Simply Be and continue working closely with FTSE 250 N Brown Group Plc, which Simply Be is a part of. We are hoping Simply Be will set an example for the rest of the 32 brands under FTSE 250 N Brown Group Plc, demonstrating the success of using our software.”

Simply Be have been extremely satisfied with WhichSocial’s software trial and committed to using WhichSocial on a daily basis. Simply Be's Social Media Manager mentioned, "We were impressed to see the updates that the Which Social team had made to the platform on our behalf and to hear of new developments in the pipeline as well".

Manchester-based WhichSocial is a real-time social media ROI tracking software with actionable alerts for ROI-driven digital marketers. The technology helps retailers measure, quantify and improve ROI from Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. WhichSocial has received investment from various business pioneers and institutional investors, such as Creative England, Unilever, Ingenious and Bauer Media. The company is currently working with fashion retailers from FTSE 250 group and Sunday Times’ Fast Track 100 list, as well as one of the 1000 most visited UK website. Visit http://www.whichsocial.com for more details.

GrowthBusiness Feature Collider12

GrowthBusiness is an invaluable resource for entrepreneurs and leaders of fast-growth enterprises, so we are proud to see Collider12 feature on their front page. The article includes video interviews with one of our co-founders, Rose Lewis, and two of our startups, Avocarrot and Locomizer. They share their experience with the Collider12 accelerator, and offer other startups advice on how to raise finance. View the article here to read the whole piece.

Collider12: Six Months On

After a great six months here at Collider12, we couldn't help but reflect back and see what we, and our startups, have achieved.

Locomizer Doubles Valuation In Collider Second Round Investment

Locomizer, the “big data” startup has secured a second round of investment from Collider. The investment, £50k, takes Collider’s holding to 20% and values the firm at more than double its valuation on entering the Collider “Collision Phase” in February. “The company has made excellent progress. We started with two very knowledgeable and very smart scientists and worked with them and the Collider12 brands to refine their proposition and develop their story and find the right application niche. Locomizer now has a very well defined proposition and product offer” explained Rose Lewis, a co-founder of Collider.

“Locomizer were chosen as the investors recognised their ability to achieve significant growth and they have a fantastic patentable algorithm,” Rose continued. “The Collision Phase allowed Locomizer to have access to brand data, test their technology with it, and prove their location analytics truly work. The investors were very impressed by the outcome of their extension experiments, and wanted to invest in this Post-Collision period.”

Alex Poliakov, Locomizer’s co-founder, said that the “additional money validates the strategic direction the company is undertaking, with the development of Audience Discovery Engine that enables audience discovery for relevant targeting based on people mobility patterns.” Locomizer's other co-founder, Alexei, said that he is "very proud to get recognition of Collider again and receive a follow-up investment! It has been an exciting journey with a team of Collider so far. It is unstoppable and life-changing."

UK-based Locomizer is an enterprise location analytics company, which was recently named by Mashable as one of the top 25 startups in the UK. Their world's first Audience Discovery Engine powered by Biology-inspired proprietary algorithm creates highly-targetable user interest profiles by identifying user behavior patterns from location updates (directly from mobile phones or via mobile apps like Twitter, FourSquare, etc). This enables their enterprise customers to uncover the right audience for the right targeting, resulting in higher mobile marketing ROI along with increased conversion and engagement rates. Visit http://www.locomizer.com for more details.

Since joining Collider, Locomizer has since seen their over-seas prospect improve considerably after being accepted into another accelerator in Silicon Valley, Momentum, partnered with Mobile Monday and Racket Space.

Guest Post From Locomizer

 This is the full post that Alexei Poliakov, co-founder of Locomizer, was recently asked to write for the Telefonica blog, which you can see here. 

Recently, we had a very interesting group discussion at the startup networking dinner hosted by Telefonica in San Francisco on “What is the future of maps?”. Since my startup, Locomizer, deals with a lot of location data on a daily basis, I would like to share my thoughts regarding this topic with a broader audience.

First, let us touch on some key trends that are redefining our notion of location and maps. We must admit that the era of persistent location is upon us as we speak. For better or worse, our whereabouts are tracked, analyzed and recorded on a constant basis. The abundance of mobile phones makes it easy to access personal data such as location. For example, cell-tower triangulation tracking generates tons of location data as the nearest cell-tower signals are determined every seven seconds. Moreover, the reality is that personal location data is not confined to just telecoms as it is being generated across multiple verticals. It is imperative for governments and business organizations to obtain customer consent and be more transparent about their usage of personal location data to avoid controversies like the NSA surveillance program.

Despite all these concerns, let’s face it - persistent location is here to stay. Location is our identity – the places we visit in our daily lives define our real-life preferences and interests. Consumers are warming up to the idea of personal location sharing as shown by the increasing usage of Facebook’s Nearby service. Last December, Facebook reported that 250 million users were tagging posts with location on a monthly basis which roughly corresponds to 800 geo-tags a second.

The explosion of personal location data creates a rewarding opportunity for organizations to gain a better understanding of their customers and their needs. However, the challenge is not in data availability but in how it is translated to retrieve the data-driven insights about customer behavior around certain places. To start winning in this space, one must own the “geo-stack” as famously described by Chris Dixon. Nevertheless, controlling the functional layers of geo-stacks, including geography maps, point of interest data, and customer geodata, may not be enough. Industry players must create a winning proposition showcasing a clear benefit for consumers to use their services AND to be at ease whilst sharing their personal location data.

So, to answer “What is the future of maps?”, I would like to paraphrase Fred Wilson and say that the future of maps is in understanding maps with people in them.

Alexei was working for big corporate names in the mobile and wireless domain until he co-founded a startup called Locomizer in February 2013. Locomizer is an enterprise location data analytics platform that enables audience discovery for relevant targeting. In June 2013, Mashable included Locomizer in their list of 25 Top UK startups.