Tweetsense makes its first sale, considers what's next

8/15/2016 Julia Sullivan, ECE ILLINOIS

ECE undergraduate William Widjaja was featured in Wired In, a technology feature of The News-Gazette.

Written by Julia Sullivan, ECE ILLINOIS

Photo by Heather Coit/The News-Gazette
Photo by Heather Coit/The News-Gazette
ECE undergraduate William Widjaja is no stranger to media attention. What started as a weekend of coding for a statistics project has become Tweetsense, a platform that accurately predicted the Brexit vote and the outcome of the 2015 Chicago mayoral election based on social media chatter, that has been featured in stories by ChicagoInno, WCIA (video), and The 21st (audio), among other news outlets.

This weekend, his story was featured in Wired In, a technology feature of The News-Gazette, and he shared some good financial news.

"We made our first sale, a subscription, a couple of weeks ago to a state representative. We'd rather not give a name," Widjaja said.

What's next for Widjaja and his business partner, Computer Science undergratuate Cody Pawlowski? They are exploring other in-demand services, including a partnership with WILL radio for story identification.

Tweetsense was one of the startups participating in the iVenture Accelerator this year.


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This story was published August 15, 2016.