Every day, over 1.9 million people regularly use social media to share their opinions, fears or excitement about specific brands and products. But how do you listen to these conversations? More importantly, how do you extract valuable insights from this huge database?
“Since the creation of Talkwalker in 2009, we have been able to develop a powerful proprietary technology that now scans over 150 million web sources in real time. The goal is to provide our clients with a centralized platform for all their social listening, social data analysis and reporting needs – not only for their brands and products, but also for those of their competitors” says Robert Glaesener, CEO of Talkwalker. (Photo: Talkwalker inaugurated new office in Luxembourg city center)
What are your plans for an international expansion?
R.G. In less than 8 years, our platform has attracted over 600 clients all over the world, including giants such as Benetton, Coca-Cola, Peppercom or even Publicis. These companies from all sizes and expertise obviously use Talkwalker to manage their e-reputation, but also to identify new influencers in their industry, to add value to their market studies, to understand the level of performance of their social media campaigns or even to boost their competitor benchmarking. We also teamed up with prestigious partners such as Twitter, who certified our product in 2014, Hootsuite, Klipfolio, Lexis Nexis, and most recently the business intelligence platform Tableau, who now integrates Talkwalker data to provide our common clients with even more actionable business insights.
As of today, Germany, France, Benelux, Italy and the USA are our main markets. To answer the growing interest in the US for our technology, we decided in February 2015 to reinforce our presence on the American continent with the opening of brand new offices in the center of New York City. One year after the opening, the results are extremely positive, not only in terms of sales but also in terms of the excellent reputation Talkwalker is building for itself in Northern America.
What products and services do you offer?
R.G. For Talkwalker, the challenge is to keep innovating. Because of the international nature of our clients, our product must remain ahead of the curve in a market in constant evolution, and our team has to constantly find new ways to interpret social data and extract valuable insights.
In October, we released a new data visualization tool to finally understand what makes a content go viral on social media. Thanks to Talkwalker’s Virality Map, brands can now see how a tweet, a Facebook post or a news article spreads through different media types, countries or languages.
In March 2015, we released our very own image recognition technology that allows over 30,000 brands to identify their logos in images posted on social channels and online. This technology is directly incorporated into the Talkwalker platform, providing users with the most comprehensive analytics available for online visual content.
How are talents the key to Talkwalker’s innovation and success?
R.G. The key to this exceptional growth can be found in the incredible skills of the Talkwalker workforce. In 2009, we were just a small Luxembourgish start-up with just two people, but we now have about 100 employees on two continents; this is just the beginning! We plan to add about 50 new hires to our workforce in 2016 just in Luxembourg. The challenge is of course to find the right skills, but Luxembourg is a great talent pool, and we work hard to find the best fit for our company culture!
What do you think about the Luxembourg’s ecosystem for startups?
R.G. People often ask us: why Luxembourg? The answer is quite simple: in my opinion, there is no best place to start a business. Both of our founders are Luxembourgish, and the support we have received from the government and local startup accelerators is what has allowed us to grow so rapidly. When people think about Luxembourg, the first thing that comes to mind might be finance or accounting, but the reality is quite different. Luxembourg City now leads the way in terms of startups and innovation, especially in the technological industry. We are at the heart of Europe, in a country with a high quality education system at the crossroad of France, Belgium and Germany. All of these factors give us access to international clients and a very qualified workforce.
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