Geofeedia

History

Geofeedia has received an undisclosed amount of money from In-Q-Tel, an investment operation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.[2] The company raised $3.5 million in their second round of venture capital in October 2014. At the time, major clients included the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and Dell. Clients could visualize posts in an area in realtime and analyze the contents.[3] Services mined by Geofeedia include Instagram, Twitter, Periscope, Vine, YouTube, and Sina Weibo. The company raised $17 million in Series B funding in early 2016 from Silversmith Capital Partners[4] and reported 250% revenue growth in 2015 with clients including Mall of America and the NCAA. In 2016, 60 people worked for the company.[5]

Controversy

In October 2016, the American Civil Liberties Union published a report that the company's technologies were used to identify and arrest protestors in events such as the 2015 Baltimore protests that followed the death of Freddie Gray. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, who were named in the report, restricted Geofeedia's access to user data as a result.[6][7] Facebook had used the service itself to detect an intruder uploading photos taken inside the office of its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.[8][9] After the cutoffs, the company laid off half of its staff.[1]

References
  1. Geofeedia cuts half of staff after losing access to Twitter, Facebook
  2. The CIA Is Investing in Firms That Mine Your Tweets and Instagram Photos
  3. "Geofeedia geolocates your social media postings, reaps $3.5M". venturebeat.com. October 15, 2014.
  4. "Geofeedia Raises $17M To Help Businesses Tap Into Social Location Data". techcrunch.com. February 3, 2016. Retrieved December 29, 2016.
  5. Ha, Anthony. "Geofeedia Raises $17M To Help Businesses Tap Into Social Location Data". Tech Crunch.
  6. Kolodny, Lora. "Facebook, Twitter cut off data access for Geofeedia, a social media surveillance startup". Tech Crunch.
  7. "Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram surveillance tool was used to arrest Baltimore protestors". The Verge.
  8. Marotti, Ally. "Chicago police used Geofeedia, the TweetDeck for cops under fire from ACLU". The Chicago Tribune.
  9. "Facebook caught an office intruder using the controversial surveillance tool it just blocked". The Verge.


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