Sentiment analysis engine gets $1.2m backing

US-- Investors have pumped $1.2m into the development of a sentiment analysis engine that aims to find and rank the most influential sources of opinion online.

The technology, developed by Jodange, is built on the work of Claire Cardie, professor of computational linguistics at Cornell University, who co-founded the company with entrepreneur Larry Levy.

Levy said: “This round of financing is an endorsement of the potential that exists for delivering sentiment analytics that goes beyond the basic high level positive or negative labeling that so many companies provide today.”

Jodange's technology sorts through wikis, blogs, corporate sites, and online media outlets in a bid to identify and isolate individuals' opinions and sentiments about key topics. According to the company, the technology helps users decipher who is worth listening to and how best to correlate their opinions to business outcomes.

Investment in the firm comes from Big Red Ventures, whose fund managers are all second year MBA students at Cornell University's Johnson School of Management. A number of private individuals also invested.

Author: Brian Tarran