Before Its Viral

Through indicators like tweets, shares and comments, people signal what stories are engaging them every minute. Before Its Viral's technology tracks all of this activity for millions of stories to identify those getting the most discussion online.

Paul Quigley and Andrew Mullaney co-founded Before Its Viral in 2011. Their plan: to use social data to identify the best content on the web in real time. The team won a place on the National Digital Research Centre’s (NDRC) Launchpad Accelerator program in September 2011, and launched an early version of Before Its Viral, earning coverage from the BBC, The Next Web, Mashable and many other outlets. In 2012, the company attracted angel investment from the NDRC, New York-based entrepreneur and investor Shane Naughton and UK-based Meridian Growth Capital. Before Its Viral unveiled its Spike platform for newsrooms in 2012. The tool attracted positive reviews from The Next Web, The World Association of Newspapers, and Journalism.co.uk, and soon had hundreds of active users. They include newsrooms at USA Today, ABC News, and the Huffington Post, as well as leading agencies such as Digitas and Resource.