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Sheyda Demooei, Co-founder and CTO, ViralMoment

Engineering Technology to Track Trends

Keyword search has been the go-to tool for tracking conversations online, but it can fall short. Drawing on computer vision experience from work at NASA, Sheyda Demooei (ENG 2016, 2016) is able to suss out insights from real conversations, with a new technology and her startup, ViralMoment.

ViralMoment is an artificial intelligence-driven social intelligence tool that drops in on video conversations posted on social media sites. Companies subscribe to manage their brands, but it’s also a powerful antidote to the polarization of ideas that comes from an algorithm designed to filter information.

“I’m from Iran, and I saw a lot of family members spiral into misinformation in posts during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Sheyda, the company’s CTO, says. “I was also bothered by my news feeds — I only saw posts I agreed with. When (fellow Tartan on the Rise and CEO Chelsie Hall) pitched the idea for ViralMoment, I saw the value right away.”

Sheyda coded and engineered the technology ViralMoment uses to glean insights online. What she developed is used by major brands including Coca-Cola, Hulu, Warner Bros. and others. Delta Airlines uses ViralMoment to monitor posts for customer service issues, while DC Comics wants to recognize the use of superhero intellectual property in user-generated content.

As the future brings new tech capabilities, the ViralMoment team expects to play a bigger role in exposing deepfakes and other generative AI outputs that spread bad information. They’re also launching ViralMoment Intelligence, an agency that synthesizes and reports on digital intelligence from ViralMoment insights. Longer term, look for generative AI features that pull more insights out of social intelligence.

“Everybody is affected by algorithms,” Sheyda says. “Knowing what’s showing up and being able to measure it helps companies and brands address things in a more efficient way.”

Story by Elizabeth Speed