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DataSift Unlocks the Value of Monetizing the Social Web
[July 11, 2011]

DataSift Unlocks the Value of Monetizing the Social Web


NEW YORK & SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)--

DataSift, a Delaware corporation, today announced a $6 million round of VC funding co-led by IA Ventures and GRP Partners. DataSift is one of only two companies globally licensed by Twitter (News - Alert) to re-syndicate its content. The $6 million investment will be used to build global sales and support teams to service the surge in demand the company is seeing for providing its real-time feed.

Dick Costolo (News - Alert), CEO of Twitter said: "DataSift was among the first to use the Twitter Firehose to provide meaningful insight for brands and publishers, and now they share their expertise with developers across the ecosystem who need an easy way to access Twitter data. We're delighted to see DataSift receive thisfunding, which is indicative of the value the venture community sees in the Twitter ecosystem as a whole."



Mark Suster, partner at GRP Partners said: "In a market where real-time data is exploding, companies that can process, understand and harness the value of this information will drive real value. DataSift makes the stream manageable for other companies to digest it. When Twitter encouraged our investment we felt very reassured."

"IA Ventures invests in early-stage companies developing tools and technologies for managing and extracting value from big data," said Roger Ehrenberg, founder and managing partner at IA Ventures. "DataSift is mining the very source of today's big data - the social media landscape which is still the wild-west from a data management standpoint. DataSift is one of the first tools to pierce the veil of monetizing Twitter and show how to capitalize on knowledge."


Nick Halstead CEO of DataSift said: "We are truly proud to be working with the likes of Twitter, GRP Partners and IA Ventures, to further our vision of democratizing data, and unlocking the business intelligence within the social web. This announcement marks another milestone in our journey towards on-demand real-time data processing and will generate a new wave of innovative products built upon Twitter."

DataSift is the first real-time content curation platform, allowing companies to filter and analyze the full Twitter firehose. DataSift also incorporates several other real-time feeds and adds additional metadata such as location, user information, authority and even sentiment analysis. Companies in data-intensive industries such as news, publishing, marketing, advertising and financial services are already benefiting from DataSift's pay-as-you-consume platform. The result is real-time business intelligence.

About DataSift

For the past 3 years DataSift has been building social media tools and platforms, which are leading the expansion of the real time social web. DataSift has three goals:

  • To build the best platforms for developers, publishers, brands and agencies
  • To unlock the power and data of social media
  • To democratize real-time data processing
  • To standardize and simplify access to licensed content

DataSift was a recent finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt. It has a long history of innovating in social media having created the entire category for retweet buttons, still the largest independent provider of such tools across the web. DataSift is also the maker of the popular TweetMeme product.


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