DataSift grabs $42M to grow its social data platform

Big data startup DataSift has closed a fresh $42 million round of funding, the company announced today.

DataSift’s platform allows businesses and other organizations to extrapolate social data from across many popular social networking sites. It then interprets that data to be used in conjunction with enterprise services to give its clients a better handle on public opinion and help them better shape marketing messages.

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“The speed at which social data is transforming information-based industries is positively staggering,” said DataSift’s Rob Bailey in a statement. He noted that the business potential of DataSift’s platform in just a few use cases (brand monitoring, social advertising, and using social data in call centers) currently represents a $70 billion opportunity for social data alone. “A wide range of secondary use cases for social data including investor relations, product development, financial analysis, and supply chain management will drive further growth. All of this indicates that we are still in the early days.”

DataSift said it plans to use the additional capital to further develop its social data processing tech, improve the ecosystem for services using its platform, and hire more employees.

The new funding round, DataSift’s third, was led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Scale Venture Partners, Upfront Ventures, IA Ventures, Northgate Capital, Daher Capital, and Cendana Capital.

Founded in 2010, the San Francisco-based startup has raised a total of $72 million in funding to date.