Vermont social media safety firm becomes Purdue Research Park affiliate
September 16, 2010
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., and MONTPELIER, Vt. - YouDiligence, a technology company that provides an Internet safety subscription service to parents that protects their children from Web predators and cyber-bullies by searching their social networking pages for troubling content, has become an affiliate of the Purdue Research Park of West Lafayette.
The company also offers a service called UDiligence to university athletic departments to protect the reputations of student-athletes from problematic posts on social networking pages.
YouDiligence, based in Montpelier, Vt., was founded in 2008. Kevin Long is the CEO, and he earned his bachelor's degree from Purdue in 1992. Long said the technology is virtually invisible, allowing for better coverage and more user independence than competing technologies.
"YouDiligence helps parents give kids the space they want while protecting them at the same time," he said. "What's important is that the technology works regardless of the person's location or what device was used to post the flagged words. Conventional monitoring software installed on a specific computer works only on that device."
End users - parents, university athletic departments and corporations - provide YouDiligence with keywords they want tracked. They receive e-mail alerts when the words appear on their children's, athletes' or employees' Facebook, MySpace or Twitter page. They also are alerted if the individual being monitored posts questionable material on other pages. The alerts provide the word, the context in which it was used and a link when a match is found. Parents also have access to an online dashboard that identifies their children's online "friends" and keeps a database of any troubling posts.
"The same holds true for college athletic department officials who want to protect the reputations of their athletes and school, or corporation executives who want to avoid potential Sarbanes-Oxley and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority violations."
Long explained why YouDiligence became an affiliate of the Purdue Research Park.
"Purdue is a world-class leader in technology and management innovation. It made sense for us to take advantage of the ability to work with different Purdue entities. Also, the access to academic and professional services was exactly what we need at this stage of our company," he said. "These resources and the cutting-edge research and technology will help us turn our new and emerging ideas into reality."
About YouDiligence
YouDiligence is a leading developer and distributor of online safety and reputation management products and services. YouDiligence targets individuals, organizations and companies who want to track and monitor user-generated content on social networking sites. YouDiligence is headquartered in Montpelier, Vt., and has an office in West Lafayette, Ind.
About Purdue Research Park
The Purdue Research Park (https://www.purdueresearchpark.com) has the largest university-affiliated business incubation complex in the country in four locations across Indiana. The parks are home to about 200 companies that employ 4,000 people and are located in West Lafayette, Merrillville, Indianapolis and New Albany.
Contact at Purdue Research Park: Steve Martin, 765-588-3342, sgmartin@prf.org
Source: Kevin Long, 765-586-9283, klong@youdiligence.com
