QSearch helps brands and public figures track social media sentiment

With so much data poured on to Facebook every day, advertisers are constantly looking for better ways to leverage the social network and improve their targeted promotions. QSearch, a startup based in Taipei and Singapore, is one company looking to help businesses comb through Facebook data for better strategic insights.

QSearch offers brands and other entities a downloadable app that measures how relevant certain keywords are to a campaign, or the entity itself.

“If I have a business selling soap, we can track the word ‘soap,’ and then see which articles about soap are getting shared the most,” explains QSearch CEO Roger Do. “From a business perspective, you might notice that people share articles about soap that are also about babies. The other side is business intelligence. If I sell soap and I want to see what my competitors are doing, we’ll track their content. If they have one piece of content that goes viral, maybe you’ll want to think about that piece.”

According to Do, the use cases for QSearch’s technology are numerous and open-ended. In Taiwan, the company attracted media attention by working with Dr. Ko Wen-Je, the then-candidate for Taipei’s mayorship who ultimately won his office bid. Do claims that during the election, the company monitored keywords closely associated with Ko. A change in keyword might indicate a change in public perception, which could then inform the type of content Ko’s team posted on social media. They also helped the candidate engage with young voters.

“Dr. Ko wanted to connect with people who have not voted under the age of 40,” says Do. We figured out [the activities this demographic likes to do] and each activity’s relative strength on Facebook. Street dancing was very popular, so we had him meet with a street dance teacher.”

As for how QSearch can help with business branding, Do points to how a Taiwanese race car driver posted a photo of herself opening an account with E.Sun Bank, and ended up receiving hundreds of likes. E. Sun, with this data, might then consider a campaign that features this person.

Elliot Chou and Tien-Yu Lee began developing QSearch’s core technology towards the end of 2012. The team later brought on Do to add some sales muscle, just as Lee returned to his position Cooliris, which was acquired by Yahoo not long afterwards. QSearch’s “founding team” now consists of Chou, Lee, Do, and Sheila Wang, who joined in late 2014 after working for Acer.

QSearch’s core search technology hasn’t changed since its early days, but the team had gone through several product iterations (Do counts seven) before settling on a business intelligence app. Do says that at one point the company experimented with a photo album-esque service wherein they sold printed collections of users’ forgotten Facebook photos.

“A lot of startups have one app that solves one problem. We had really cool technology but couldn’t find an application for it,” says Do.