Organizing The Noise Through Pheedback

Marla Shaivitz March 2, 2011 Tweet

Social media has given voice to, well, everyone. Good, bad, ugly, relevant and irrelevant, this information is all out there – yet finding it all, and making sense of it, and putting it to actionable (and profitable) effort is the challenge for businesses online and off.

Two former online advertising executives see cutting through this “noise” created by user-generated content sites as a business opportunity  – and just launched a system they anticipate will aggregate sentiments expressed around companies as well as individuals.

Dubbed Pheedback, the recently launched (March 1) social media platform allows users to post feedback about anyone or any company and broadcast it across the web through social networks. Pheedback aims to “measure the real sentiment of the world towards people and their surroundings”.

The site was created earlier this year by James Curran and Ian Mahaney, former Advertising.com/AOL executives residing in Baltimore, who both have over a decade of experience in advertising with specific verticals including Mobile (Ian was a leader at Millennial Media and currently is CTO of Converge) and Behavioral Targeting (James helped drive creation of Lotame Solution’s flagship product), as well as social media, affiliate and email marketing. The idea was conceived after a business deal gone sour. The founders wanted to look for a way to warn others about a company that was using bad business practices. Having nowhere to turn with any impact, Pheedback was born. A company with good practices eventually won the business and the team found they should be rewarded through that good exchange.

Pheedback aims and claims to solve two issues:

“For consumers, our system allows them to be able to leave feedback (good or bad) in a place where it will be heard by its recipient. Until now, this information was disparate and often hard to unite.

For companies, it’s one source to receive feedback that they can trust as not being curated or modified by whatever sites selling their products.”

Pheedback also offers advertising campaigns targeted to Pheedback users against their sentiment on their brands and products, through their travel on the web. In addition to campaigns, the company offers analytics covering a real look a business’ target audience and the audience sentiment towards the products and services.

Sign in as yourself, or leave your comments anonymously – Pheedback encourages both modes of sharing. “Pheedback’s goal is to be the source for feedback and reputation for everything, including people, products and companies and more. Feedback and measurement is not curated or adjusted, providing the true reflection of how its users feel. Feedback can be negative, neutral or positive and can be left anonymously or transparent.”

Pheedback has competition in this space from Get Satisfaction and User Voice, however, Pheedback sets itself apart by not charging users for their service. “We differ from them in the way that our product is free to use and it is intertwined within sites all across the web where a true sample of customer satisfaction can be gathered.”

Pheedback is one of the featured companies at Tech Cocktail’s Baltimore mixer, in partnership with the Greater Baltimore Tech Council on Thursday, March 3rd– if you’re in the area, join us!