Regular followers / readers of this blog will know I’m fascinated by new technology – and particularly start-ups. Most of those I’m interested in at present come out of the Bay area, so it’s always a joy when there’s a Brit to shout about.
DataSift recently launched for Alpha tests and I was lucky enough to be invited. It comes from Nick Halstead‘s stable (founder of TweetMeme, one of the best Twitter filters), so it has something to live up to. It’s essentially a highly configurable filtering engine, not just for Twitter, but also for other social and web content sources. I’ve been playing for a week or so now and I’m hugely impressed by the results one can achieve. However, putting it just in these terms doesn’t fully explain why I’m so enthused about this particular platform.
This morning, I was turned on to a post by @ScepticGeek, which looks in detail at mapping numerous offerings in this space. A matrix map of those focussed on search versus those focussed on discoverability. It’s a great post, well-thought out and well explained. It shows exactly why I think DataSift has so much to offer – so I’ve shared the key graphic here, but I’d really recommend you read the full post here.
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