Please find below news and events from Attentio SA.


NEW: Buzz in Social Media Failed to Predict 'iPad' as Name of New Apple Device

BRUSSELS, Belgium, January 27, 2010 - Attentio S.A., the leading European provider of enterprise social media monitoring, today announced that the global social media space predicted iSlate to be the name of the new Apple device announced some hours ago.

While the media space was overcrowded with discussions on the new tablet device, a majority of social media postings (more than 41 percent) predicted the name to be iSlate. Yesterday, on January 26h, only 32 percent of articles referred to the iPad, the name announced today at 10am PST by Apple CEO Steve Jobs at an event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. 27 percent of articles used iTablet.

People have blogged, tweeted and commented intensively about the anticipated Apple device long before today's launch date. Since November last year, the Attentio Brand Dashboardâ reports more than 137,000 mentions of the rumored Apple tablet device, out of which most of them (56,000) were recorded on blogs, then tweets (44,000), then news websites (23,000) and, finally, forums (23,000).

In the last few days, the volume of social media conversations about the new tablet device have exploded, growing from just 2,000 hits on Monday to almost 10,000 as of today at 7pm Central European Time minutes before the launch, a five-fold increase in just three days.

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Attentio announces new directors to assist in global expansion

BRUSSELS, Belgium, January 21 2010 - Attentio S.A., the leading European provider of enterprise social media monitoring and analytics, today announced the addition of two highly competent board members to boost its aggressive international strategy.

Anders Grindland is a successful software entrepreneur. Having founded and sold Sysnet, an early leader in client server management software, he founded what became Nimsoft Inc. in 1998. As CEO until 2006 and currently Chairman he has grown Nimsoft’s customer base to over 700 customers including global brand name companies, managed service providers and a large number of medium enterprise organizations. In 2008, Inc. magazine ranked Nimsoft as the 36th Fastest Growing Software Company with a 534-percent revenue growth over a three-year period.

Barbara Roose is Senior Investment Manager of the Brussels Regional Investment Company’s Group (BRIC), a Belgian venture capital fund that recently took a minority stake in Attentio. Experienced in coaching entrepreneurs in start-up companies, she is in charge of expansion capital investments and represents BRIC on the boards of about 20 companies. Ms. Roose graduated in 1990 from the Solvay Business School (Université Libre de Bruxelles).

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Attentio raises new growth capital through an investment from SRIB/GIMB.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Nov 24 2009 - Attentio S.A., the leading European provider for social media monitoring, today announced the completion of a round of financing from the Brussels Regional Investment Company (SRIB/GIMB).

Attentio provides companies with its online Attentio Brand DashboardTM that tracks and analyzes online conversations across social and traditional media worldwide. An automated insight engine discovers topics discussed around brands and product and also analyzes sentiments. Companies and agencies use the technology to manage their market reputation as they can instantly see how customer sentiments change over time and across geographies.

“This is our first institutional financing round and we have an investor onboard that can support our future growth to a global position in the expanding social media monitoring market”, said Ms. Amaia Lasa, CEO of Attentio. “Attentio delivers unique, automated insights through our patent-pending technology and we will keep growing our already wide coverage of social media sources from all corners of the globe”, added Ms. Lasa.

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Attentio is sponsoring Twestival in Brussels

BRUSSELS, SEPTEMBER, 2009 - Like last time we love how people come together using social media, to network, party and raise money for charity. For the last event money was raised for clean water projects, this year people can vote for the charity they like. Twestival is a global event and from the 10th – 13th hundreds of cities will be involved with the simple mantra - Tweet. Meet. Give. For more information check out www.twestival.be or www.twestival.com


Social Media Analytics Firm Attentio Appoints new CEO; Bolsters Management Team

BRUSSELS, JULY 6, 2009 - Attentio SA/NV, the European leader in social media intelligence, is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Amaia Lasa as CEO.

Ms. Lasa is a marketing professional with a M.Sc. and over twelve years of increasing responsibilities within marketing and IT for the European headquarters of FedEx Corp. (NYSE:FDX) and Toyota Motor Corporation (NYSE:TM). Her extensive experience within market research, e-commerce marketing, IT development and people & process management has given her the necessary expertise to successfully lead an entrepreneurial organization such as Attentio. Ms. Lasa joined Attentio as COO in July 2007 and was appointed CMO in March 2009 with the objective of expanding Attentio's sales and marketing organization in Europe.

Mr. Simon McDermott, Attentio's co-founder and CEO for the past 3 years, will be assuming the role of United Kingdom Country Manager reflecting the recognition of the UK as Europe's most important market for social media analytics. He will also become Attentio's Chief Communication Officer. His background and unique experience in the industry will provide support to Ms. Lasa and the senior management team as they continue to expand the capabilities of Attentio's innovative suite of social media analytics software.

"This is a natural next step in Attentio's development and I am confident that Amaia will guide this exciting company to new levels of profitability, activity and growth. I am looking forward to working with her through this transition", said Simon McDermott, Attentio's CEO. "She brings a wealth of management and IT experience that is crucial for the current stage of Attentio with our aggressive market expansion strategy."

In a move to strengthen the management team, Attentio's principal founder and internet serial entrepreneur, Mr. Per Siljubergsåsen, has been appointed Chief Product Officer and will work closely with Attentio's newly appointed CTO, Mr. Frizo Janssens on Attentio's patent-pending analytics technology.

Mr. William Klippgen, technology entrepreneur and investor, will join Attentio's Board of Directors, bringing relevant start-up and investment experience. Mr. Klippgen is executive director of Singapore seed investment fund BAF Spectrum Pte Ltd and is co-founder of European internet success Kelkoo.com.


Attentio wins Best Demo at ICWSM

Attentio has just received the Best Demo award at the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), in San Jose, California, once again recognizing the effective visualization technique matched with leading edge algorithms created by Attentio that are used to help understand and detect relationships between brands and topics in social and mainstream media..

William Klippgen joins Attentio Board of Directors

Brussels, May 29th 2009 – Attentio is delighted to announce that serial entrepreneur and angel investor William Klippgen has joined the Attentio Board of Directors. William is co-founder and executive director of the Singapore seed investment fund BAF Spectrum Pte Ltd. He was the co-founder of European comparison shopping site Kelkoo.com and advises and invests in start-up companies in Asia, Australia, and Europe

Nominated for
best European
start-up venture

Brussels, December 9 2008. Attentio has been nominated for the European venture contest award of 2008. Among 16 cutting edge European finalists, Attentio will be presenting at the Barcelona event to be held at December 17-18, 2008. More info about this event is available at the link below.

>> The European Venture Contest Award 2008
>> The list of the finalists

Attentio is moving its Brussels headquarters

Brussels, October 6 2008. Attentio has today moved its headquarters to a new address in the centre of Brussels. We loved the old location at mVillage, but our new offices gives us the more needed space. Our new address is at StudioTROPE, Bloemenstraat 32/Rue aux Fleurs 32 (Level 2), B-1000 Brussels, Belgium.

>> Get map to Attentio's new offices

Successful capital increase; strengthened board of directors

Oslo, June 13 2008. Attentio has successfully completed a capital increase to enable further technology development of its portfolio of multilingual social media brand monitoring & analytics technology. In addition, the team is thrilled about attracting Ole Jørgen Fredriksen and Bjørn Haugland as new members of the board of directors. Mr. Fredriksen has 20 years of CEO experience from Ask Proxima with revenues of about €1 billion before it was acquired by InFocus in 2001 to become the second largest projector manufacturer in the world. Mr. Haugland is the founder of the world leading online market research company Confirmit.

Attentio launches Trendpedia beta

Brussels, May 5 2008.
Attentio has successfully launched a beta version of its consumer showcase blog trend search engine. Trendpedia lets consumers and social media analysts search buzz for free in with three month back-in-time tracking.

>> Trendpedia™ beta

This is what some influencers say about Trendpedia:

>> ReadWriteWeb about Trendpedia
>> KillerStartups
>> The NextWeb
>> Tips from the T-List

For more advanced features such as multilingual support, topic clustering and sentiment, brand owners are requested to try out the Attentio Brand Dashboard™.
 

NEW: Among 50 candidates, Attentio was awarded best business case at Benelux Venture Forum

Brussels, March 19 2008. Attentio was yesterday awarded as the most promising business case of Europe’s investment community at the Benelux Venture Forum. Sponsored by Ernst & Young, this 7th edition of the event was held in Brussels on March 18. Leading venture capital firms from all of Europe was present.

>> Benelux Venture Forum web site
 

Attentio is co-hosting social media marketing event with Emakina

Brussels, March 10 2008. Attentio is co-hosting an event with Emakina, the well-know Belgian web 2.0 agency. The subject of the event is Social Media in Marketing: what is the added value for companies. The event will be held on

March 21 2008, Place Flagey in Brussels
(A second session is scheduled on April 17 2008 in Ghent.)

The academies are aimed to share knowledge with the agency's clients on a panel of broad competences and hot topics. Attentio, as the European social media monitoring and measurement leader, has been invited to demonstrate how the (pro)active "listening" in on online conversations can add value to businesses and how it impacts marketing strategy.

During this one half-day event (followed by a lunch) you'll also learn through concrete business cases the basics of Social Media, the best practices to efficiently monitor and measure real-time buzz and identify threats, opportunities, influencers and detractors along with concrete business applications.

We'd be happy to meet you there. The event is free. All you need to do is pre-register here:

>> Register for the "Social Media in Marketing" event, March 21 2008

Presentations:
>> Attentio at Emakina  |  Automative case  |  Mobile phone case

If you have any questions or issues please do not hesitate to contact us at attentiocontact AT attentio DOT com or call us at + 32 211 34 70.
 

NEW: Attentio nominated for Benelux Venture 50

Brussels, March 7 2008. As one of the most promising Benelux-based start-up companies in high-tech sectors, Attentio has been identified to showcase itself to Europe’s investment community at the Benelux Venture Forum. This 7th edition of the event is sponsored by Ernst & Young and will be held in Brussels on March 18. Leading venture capital firms from all of Europe will be present.

>> Benelux Venture Forum web site
 

NEW: Dr. Frizo Janssens to join the text analytics team

Brussels, February 11 2008. Attentio has hired Dr. Frizo Janssens to join the R&D team of Attentio. Frizo is a Doctor of Engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven (K.U.Leuven) in Belgium and has written and developed extensively around natural language processing and AI technologies. His PhD thesis was “clustering of scientific fields by integrating text mining and bibliometrics”. He also recently was involved with the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Mining Massive Data Sets held in Italy last September. Attentio is delighted to have Frizo on the team. It’s really exciting that we are attracting some great talent from the world of advanced text analytics, ground breaking technology that is increasingly relevant to business and government.

Attentio sponsors the I-COM conference

Brussels, January 15 2008. Attentio will be sponsoring a panel at the second I-COM conference event to be held in Barcelona on Feb 5-8 2008. Attentio is sponsoring the panel social media measurement along side Gemius, TNS and Nielsen. “Social media is much more relevant now to communications and marketing people and we look forward to sharing our views on how it can be measured and the value brands can generate by understanding how these influential sources discuss products and services” said Simon McDermott. The i-com group includes as its patrons the IAB and EIAA and amongst its objectives aims “to provide an overview of international online media measurement standards & systems”.

>> I-COM Conference Web site

Attentio hires Amaia Lasa as COO

Brussels, September 3 2007. Amaia Lasa has recently joined Attentio's management as Chief Operating Officer (COO). Coming from Toyota, FedEx in Belgium and Solideal in Sri Lanka, she has extensive international experience in operations and marketing.  “I am thrilled to be working with Attentio, having come from a company like Toyota it’s a real change but I am looking forward to the challenge” said Amaia. “What really attracted me to Attentio was the international environment and the real belief that as social media grows, companies need to get engaged more. This is right in line with Attentio’s mission.” Amaia joins recent hires such as Monika Mrowiec (Sales team, Belgium) and Jon McLennan (senior software engineer).

Bloggers beat polls in predicting elections: Yves Leterme most popular politician in the Blogosphere

Brussels, July 7 2007. A combined research by Attentio and Hill & Knowlton reveals that buzz on Belgian blogs was more accurate in predicting last months federal elections than most opinion polls. Attentio monitored how many times Belgian politicians and parties were mentioned on Belgian blogs two months ahead of the elections until day of elections, June 10th. By monitoring blogs before the elections the success of Jean-Marie Dedecker, Yves Leterme and Didier Reynders could have been predicted.

>> Read more about the tracking of the Belgian election in our blog
>> Joint Attentio and Hill & Knowlton collaboration on election monitoring
>> Le politique show: Les blogs avaient vu juste (French)
>> "Bloggers voorspelden uitslag 10 juni beter dan peilingen" (Dutch)

Attentio received great press coverage from this project, incuding articles in La Libre, Le Soir, De Standaard, Het Laatste Nieuws, 7sur7.be, Sudpresse, Le Vif, De Morgen, Gazet Van Antwerpen, and Het Belang Van Limburg.

Attentio technology and the French election

Brussels, April 22 2007. The Norwegian blogger and advisor Anders Gjøen has used Attentio technology to aid his continuous analysis of the French election. His blog Fr2007 presents popularity and opinions statistics about the different French presidential candidates gathered automatically from what people write online.

Mr. Gjøen spotted candidate Ségolène Royal's popularity climb two weeks before the numbers were confirmed in the polls. This has again led to Mr. Gjøen participating in the news TV channel French 24's live election coverage.

>> Fr2007.com - Anders Gjøen's political blog
>> Monitoring political issues, from Observer France 24
>> Attentio measuring political buzz for LExpress.fr

Further, Norwegian national TV and press media has picked up the story. Norway will have its forthcoming election this autumn.

>> Norwegian TV NRK's headline TV news April 21 2007 (Windows Media Player)
>> Mr. Anders Gjøen early to spot Ségolène Royal's popularity climb (Norwegian)

Figure: Buzz trends for French presidential elections candidates based on
monitoring of candidate mentions from online bloggers using
Attentio technology. April 22 2007. Source: Attentio SA

Attentio named as finalist for Red Herring 100 Europe

Brussels, February 26 2007. Red Herring announced that Attentio was named a Finalist of Red Herring 100 Europe, an award given to the top 100 private technology companies based in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region. "This year’s impressive list, and unprecedented number of submissions from companies demonstrates Europe’s emergence as a major player in the global technology sector," said Red Herring Editor-in-Chief, Joel Dreyfuss. "The exceptional accomplishments of European technology companies and entrepreneurs are a testament to the rapid advancements being made in building the European innovation ecosystem."

Red Herring’s lists of top private companies are an important part of the company’s tradition of identifying new and innovative technology companies and entrepreneurs. Companies like Google, eBay and Skype were spotted in their early days by Red Herring editors, and touted as leaders that would change the way we live and work. "We are very proud to be selected as a finalist for the Red Herring 100", said Attentio CEO Simon McDermott. "We see this as a reflection of the hard work of our team and the growing need for companies to understand how their brands are perceived in social media".

Attentio SA is nominated for the
2007 European ICT Prize

Brussels, February 12 2007. Attentio has been named along with 70 of Europe’s most innovative companies as a nominee for the European ICT prize. The award is organised by Euro-CASE with the sponsorship and support of the European Commission. We are delighted that our technology and solutions have been recognized by Euro-CASE. We have a great team and are really proud to be nominated for the award, especially given that this year’s contest is so competitive with more than 450 participants.

>> Full text of press release
>> Press release from Euro-CASE

Attentio SA launches version 2 of Brand Dashboard™ for real-time monitoring of social media

Brussels, February 9 2006. Attentio SA, an emerging European provider of online market intelligence, today launched version 2 of Attentio® Brand Dashboard™ for selected clients. By continuously monitoring what is written in online news press, blogs, discussion forums and other Web-based social media, Attentio aids customers in executing successful marketing campaigns, launch new products, gain consumer insight and maintain brand reputation.

With Brand Dashboard™, customers will benefit from automated daily reporting of buzz and demographics in relation to their own and competitor’s brands and products. This new online service uses charts to visualize buzz trends, share of buzz, brand benchmarking, detection of bursting events, and breakdown by source, topic and country.

>> Full text of press release

Hiring of Ms. Kalina Lipinska as
Social Media Analyst

Brussels, December 1 2006. Addressing growing opportunities in online brand monitoring, Attentio today announced the hiring of Kalina Lipinska as social media analyst.

With a degree in Social Sciences, and her knowledge of market research and consumer studies, she will be in the best position to support our clients in their application of Attentio's Brand Dashboard and Buzz Report products.

Attentio signs agreement with leading market research
company GfK Benelux

Brussels, July 9 2006. Attentio SA/NV and GfK Benelux Marketing Services BV (GfK MS) have agreed to work together to deliver market research information based on Attentio's online market intelligence services cross-linked with the GfK retail panel information for the Benelux market. Attentio will provide real-time social media monitoring tools while GfK will provide its retail panel data and its client network.

The goal is to offer new and current GfK Benelux clients in industries such as consumer electronics, information technology and telecoms the opportunity to track online buzz (word-of-mouth) surrounding their brands and investigate the predictive and explicative power of early buzz in blogs and forums by comparing this data with point-of-sales data in a single interactive dashboard.

Attentio announces new Fortune 50 clients

Brussels, June 5 2006. Attentio SA, a provider of real-time market intelligence, announces the addition of new Fortune 50 clients to their customer portfolio. "Due to the increased awareness of social media such as blogs and discussion forums, more companies want to understand what impact these forums have on their brands," said Simon McDermott, co-founder and CEO of Attentio. These new clients come from different industries including pharmaceuticals and information technology. Both the Attentio Brand Dashboard™ and Buzz Report™ products will be applied in these cases. "We feel that Attentio is well positioned to capture a part of this emerging market as our tools and methodology take into account the language and country differences across Europe, said Mr. McDermott.

>> For further information, please contact: