Twitter IPO Sparks Investor Interest in Social Startups

DataSift Inc., a startup that makes information from social sites easier to manipulate, wasn’t planning on raising money this year -- until Twitter Inc.’s initial public offering prompted a surge of investor interest.

DataSift said today that it raised $42 million from investors led by Insight Venture Partners. Chief Executive Officer Rob Bailey said more than 20 venture-capital funds reached out to invest after Twitter revealed the size of its data-licensing business, in which the microblogging service sells information on its stream of messages to companies like DataSift that help analyze it for insights and trends. Twitter, which soared 73 percent in its IPO debut last month, made $47.5 million in 2012 through the data-mining business.