TinyMentions began as a self-taught project in which Federico Pascual, a graduate in Management and Administration from Universidad ORT Uruguay, set out to strengthen his Python programming skills and familiarize himself with terms such as backend, frontend, databases, and servers. According to him, this endeavor resulted in a product designed to analyze Twitter conversations using machine learning.
“I became interested in Twitter because it serves as a barometer—or a snapshot—of relevant events happening locally or globally. Like things related to the coronavirus, for example. And because the vast majority of existing social media monitoring tools focus on quantitative data analysis; they don’t analyze conversations or what is being said, specifically. Therefore, in addition to the fact that I would be interested in working with a tool like this both personally and professionally, I saw it as an opportunity to use the machine learning “to analyze this flow of conversations and the qualitative data that people express,” says Pascual about the concept behind his project.
According to its founder, TinyMentions allows users to gain insights from these conversations in order to make better decisions for the future, as well as to take specific actions for commercial purposes related to a product or service. “Through the platform, you can see how the public reacts to a company, to a specific campaign, to the value for money of a product or service, and other data related to feedback, ”he says.
"ORT's Bachelor's Degree in Management and Administration gave me a new perspective on the business world and fostered my entrepreneurial spirit, which has been key to my professional achievements."
Pascual also notes that TinyMentions allows you to take immediate action in certain situations: “For example, if someone mentions your company on Twitter and is speaking negatively about customer service, you can receive a real-time alert so you can take immediate action and resolve a potential crisis in a timely manner. The same applies to identifying business opportunities in real time, since you can set up alerts to track tweets from potential customers.”
Process using machine learning
Historically, analyzing data or text such as tweets, emails, or product reviews has been a very manual, costly, and difficult-to-scale process, says Pascual. As the ORT graduate explains, the way to automate this analysis is through a system of rules that determines that, if a text contains a certain word, the message is positive, negative, or refers to a specific topic. “For example, if a tweet contains the word ‘good,’ it’s positive. If it contains the word ‘help’ in a commercial context, it relates to customer service,” he says.
He also notes that machine learning achieves a higher level of text analysis than a rule-based system because “it is trained using examples, which allows the process to be automated with a level of accuracy comparable to that of a human, enabling the system to gain insights, make decisions, and act more quickly based on them.”
Since its inception, TinyMentions has focused on using machine learning to analyze conversations on Twitter. It aims to process qualitative data to obtain accurate insights for decision-making within a company or organization.
The platform is 100% focused on the Twitter social network, and there are no plans to expand to other social networks in the medium or long term, according to the graduate in Business Management and Administration. He believes there is an opportunity to create a a tool designed to analyze Twitter conversations and thus set TinyMentions’ user experience and value proposition apart from other products on the market. Furthermore, Pascual believes that “the conversations taking place on Twitter today are incredibly rich and valuable, and there is still a need for a tool that allows users to discover the insights "behind those conversations."
As the founder, Pascual has overseen the entire development of the project, from building the service and programming to marketing strategies and the market launch—skills and knowledge that, he notes, he acquired during his college years. “I believe that the Bachelor’s Degree in Management and Administration at ORT gave me a set of tools, frameworks, and playbooks that have been key to performing all kinds of tasks in sales and marketing. It also gave me a way of looking at the business world and fostered my entrepreneurial spirit, which has been crucial in the things I’ve done professionally,” he concludes.