Israeli social engagement platform Spot.IM powers the talkback system for media sites across the world. As such, the blue-and-white startup has a Big Brother view of what readers are saying about the hottest topics of the day.
The US election is, as would be expected, serving up oodles of talkbacks and comments on websites. And according to Spot.IM’s latest data, Republican Party nominee for President of the United States in the 2016 election, Donald Trump, should take heed: the number of people talking about Trump has fallen.
“The trend has flipped for Trump. If until a few weeks ago he was ‘in control’ of two thirds of the comments relating to either candidate, it appears now that the American commenting public is less enthusiastic about mentioning his name, for better or worse,” says Spot.IM CEO Nadav Shoval.
“What we examined could be taken as an indication of the level of motivation of readers to comment on a candidate, either for better or worse,” he said. “We didn’t get into whether the comments were pro- or anti- either candidate, or whether they were balanced.”
Spot.IM offers a talkback system for over 4,600 active sites including AOL, TIME, Huffington Post, and others. The company was founded in 2012 by Shoval and Ishay Green. Today, it boasts over 300 million interactions on Spot.IM-sponsored comment forums each month.
In August, the disruptive social engagement platform working with over 25 percent of the US digital publishing industry, announced a Series A funding round of $13 million.
“We’re all about bringing together the online publishing industry, and giving our partners and content creators a social community that they can be proud to cultivate. We’ve seen the struggle dealing with third parties and that’s why we’re determined to change the web,” said Shoval. “That’s why Spot.IM was created. We partner with digital publishers to keep their conversations generated from original content within their entity. We’re the crusaders leading this movement, committed to providing the most innovative tools and resources needed to successfully leverage the inherent value of quality content for our partners who actually create it.”