Thursday, July 25, 2013

ArchiveSocial Joins Forces with Code for America to Accelerate Use of Social Media for Open Government



Durham-based startup ArchiveSocial is one of five companies selected to disrupt traditional government IT

ArchiveSocial announced that it has been selected out of 190 national applicants to join the Code for America Accelerator, an exclusive four-month program focused on startups disrupting the state of technology in the public sector. The program is partially funded by tech industry giant Google, and has attracted involvement from industry and government heavyweights such as Tim O’Reilly, often credited with popularizing the term “Web 2.0”, and former White House CTO Aneesh Chopra.

ArchiveSocial was founded in 2011 to provide business-grade record keeping of social media for a variety of industries, but quickly realized that there was a special opportunity to impact government for the greater good.

“There are only so many times you hear the phrases 'top 5 issue' or 'crying need' to know that there is an opportunity to make a huge impact,” said ArchiveSocial’s Founder and CEO Anil Chawla. “We've found this opportunity with the countless public agencies that want to improve government-citizen communication via social media, but are constrained by policy issues and record keeping requirements.”


An example of ArchiveSocial’s commitment to disrupting the state of technology in government, the startup pioneered a first-of-its-kind interactive “Open Archive” of social media available for any citizen to access. The states of North Carolina and South Carolina were the first to launch Open Archives with the company, with other major cities and counties following suit.

Key leadership from ArchiveSocial will be temporarily stationed in San Francisco over the course of four months beginning in August. While the company is looking forward to reaping the many benefits of a presence in Silicon Valley, it remains dedicated to its roots in Durham, North Carolina. ArchiveSocial has participated in several local initiatives including Startup Stampede, Triangle Startup Factory, and NC IDEA. The company was also the first tenant of the highly-touted American Underground @Main campus in Durham, which is now home to more than 40 local startups.

Chawla explains, “The local startup community has opened more doors for us than I can count, and I can directly credit our involvement here in the Triangle with creating this opportunity for us. We now hope to play our small part in building the bridge between Silicon Valley and the incredible talent, technology, and unique perspective that the Triangle community has to offer.”

About ArchiveSocial
ArchiveSocial enables public entities to safely and effectively utilize social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. ArchiveSocial is the industry’s first archiving technology providing 100% authentic capture of social media for compliance with state and federal records laws such as FOIA. It provides a legal safety net, and eliminates the time and effort required to respond to public records requests. ArchiveSocial is completely hosted and requires zero IT deployment. It serves as a cost effective offering for any sized public entity, and provides the industry’s easiest and most comprehensive solution for managing records of social media. ArchiveSocial is based in Durham, North Carolina.

 

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