Another big change for DataSift — a UK startup that relates analytics to social network information firehoses to aspect trends, which had a notable mangle adult with Twitter progressing this year. Nick Halstead, who founded a association in 2010, is stepping down as CEO. Halstead will be transposed by Tim Barker, DataSift’s arch product officer.
In a blog post announcing a move, Halstead writes that he done a preference “after many deliberation” that finished with a preference to go behind to building early-stage tech companies.
Specifically, he says he is now operative on a startup called Cognitive Logic. As we can see if we go to that link, a startup is still in secrecy mode. There is no information in Halstead’s blog post or a site about what Cognitive Logic does. (We’ve contacted Halstead to see if he will tell us more.)
But as Halstead records with some British understatement, “It has been utterly a year” for DataSift, and so for some it might be unsurprising to see him step down.
DataSift originally built a repute around being one of a usually companies to have entrance to Twitter’s firehose — a full tide of Tweets and other metadata that are generated on a amicable network — and it works with a series of third parties to parse that data, or directly with vast enterprises who take a information and clout and bones it directly. But then it found itself in a banishment line of Twitter’s preference to take some-more of a large information business into a possess hands in Apr of this year. Nick Halstead was really many during a front of a ranks, penning a public statement and vocalization out opposite Twitter’s moves.
At a same time, Halstead and DataSift were taking matters into their own hands, too. Perhaps suspecting that Twitter would eventually look to build a some-more approach business on a possess data, DataSift diversified into operative with some-more social networks like Tumblr, and perhaps many particularly Facebook.
(And indeed, holding some-more control of a firehose is accurately what Twitter did after buying Gnip in 2014. In April, it announced it would not replenish a firehose understanding with DataSift. And then, only this week, Twitter unveiled a series of new initiatives involving a Gnip team, with Gnip Insights APIs and a new customer caring product.)
Ironically, given that Twitter is now perplexing to play nice, or during slightest nicer, with developers once again, it will be engaging to see if there is any correct to be done in a DataSift rift. Whatever it is, Halstead won’t be a one who has to attorney it, nonetheless he will stay on for recommendation as authority emeritus.
DataSift has lifted just underneath $78 million from investors that embody Insight Venture Partners, Scale Venture Partners, and many more.
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