How ‘well’ do you use social media? Two brothers built a social analytics platform to tell you

 

Do you like wine, kittens, and moonlit walks on the beach? Or are you more of a zombie, space exploration, sushi type person? Either way, Prollie wants to help you find like-minded souls.

Prollie is a social search platform that tracks how “well” people use social media platforms and makes connections with others who share the same interests and passions. The technology does not evaluate users on metrics like the number of followers or retweets. Rather, it focuses on the “Interest Graph” to qualify people based on their social output.

“Right now, social analytics sites measure ‘influence,’ not the quality and ability of people online, and social search is based around the content itself (tweets, updates, posts) not around the people making it,” founders (and brothers) Mike and Red Fabbri said in an email. “The new trend for consumers and marketers is moving towards the Interest Graph, linking people by what they love, not by who they know (i.e. Facebook Social Graph Search), and we stand to be the only analytics tool and search site to really tap into this trend. We evaluate people based on quality and let you search for them based on your passions.”

The Fabbri brothers founded Prollie to address their own pain points. They both had careers where they made heavy use of social media. Mike worked as a social media strategist for luxury brands like Ray-Ban, and Red headed up social media strategy at NBC Universal. They said they wanted to make a tool that helped them find people based around topics, rather than the “friend of a friend” model, and they left their jobs to build a better social search. Unlike startups like Klout, Kred, and PeerIndex which measure ‘influence,’ the Fabbris  put Prollie in the realm of Google, Bing, and Ark, because it centers on interest-based search.

“Social media shouldn’t just be about the number of people who follow you, or the quantity of reblogs you get,” they said. “It’s about you, no matter who you are. It’s about your personal mastery of the medium, the emotion you put into it, and the passions that you want to trumpet to the world.

 

Prollie is still in beta mode, but the brothers took me through how the technology works. Once users connect their social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, LinkedIn, and Foursquare) to Prollie, the algorithm analyzes all the activity to determine what topics they are talking about and interacting with while online. Each person is assigned a letter grade per network to show to what extent they know and take advantage of the tools provided by each network. Then they are shown their four top “passions” and an example from their social output for each. The data is also used by their search, which has modifiers and qualifiers for factors like passion, location, network, and grades, to generate a suggested list of users to friend and follow.

I will be the first to admit that I could be more active on social media. I only post things on Facebook that I am really excited about (as opposed to sharing my minute-by-minute feelings) and only signed up for Twitter once I started working at VentureBeat and realized that tweeting was part of the job. Accordingly, my Facebook grade is an A- while my Twitter grade is a C. Ouch. Prollie also pegged my interests pretty well. It has me down for interest in technology, startups, health & wellness, and food and drink.

Prollie is based in New York City and has raised $500,000 from angel investors, including Jetblue and Kohl’s chairman Frank Sica and Allen and Elizabeth Cutler, founders of SoulCycle.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to compose my next awesome tweet.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/11/how-well-do-you-use-social-media-two-brothers-built-a-social-analytics-platform-to-tell-you/