DataSift CEO Halstead step downs to form new company

Tim Barker, DataSift’s chief product officer, will lead it as it transitions away from Twitter

The year of the great CEO turnover continues, this time with social data platform DataSift getting new leadership at the top.

Founder and CEO Nick Halstead is leaving the company, he announced in a blog post on Friday, opting to "follow my passion for innovation and early stage growth" by forming a new company.

"We have accomplished a lot over the past seven years since I embarked on the journey that has lead DataSift to where we are today. When I founded DataSift, based on our partnership with Twitter, the firehose was little more than a trickle," he said.

"But we always had a vision to not only serve Twitter but unify, process and deliver insights from this new human-generated data at scale and in real-time. And I feel like we’re on a path to scale this idea into a world class business."

This was actually Halstead's second go-around as CEO; he had previously held the position from 2007 to 2011, before taking the reigns again last year from Rob Bailey. 

Taking over this time will be Tim Barker, who has been DataSift’s chief product officer for the last three and a half year. Before that he spent a number of years as a Salesforce executive. Barker is coming in at a time of transition for Datasift.

Until recently, the biggest supplier of data was Twitter, until the two companies had a very public falling out earlier this year, in which Halstead made his feelings about Twitter very, very clear (needless to say, they were not very positive).

DataSift is data organization service that helps companies interested in using information from social networks to better their brand and consumer awareness. So, if a company is interested in getting feedback about a new special it is running in a particular region, a DataSift search can be created to target certain geographical areas, key search terms and then analyze whether the responses are positive or negative.

In the wake of the fallout with Twitter, DataSift entered into a new partnerships with other networks, including Tumblr and Facebook. It has also focused its efforts on new technology and a new approach to delivering insights while protecting privacy with its PYLON technology.

Going forward, Halstead will be leading a new company called Cognitive Logic. Not much is known about what that company will do as of right now; its website currently contains nothing but the name of the company, and I'm sure we will find out more soon.

Halstead will also remain with DataSift as its Chairman Emeritus so will be able to "see DataSift continue to grow and flourish under Tim’s leadership."

"The next phase of DataSift will be about scaling the technology and the business to meet the market opportunity and I have every confidence in Tim and the leadership’s team to capitalize on DataSift’s unique market position."

Founded in 2010, DataSift has raised nearly $78 million in venture funding from investors that included Scale Venture Partners, Upfront Ventures, IA Ventures, Northgate Capital, Daher Capital and Cendana Capital.

Exiting CEOs

2015 has seen a number of high profile CEOs step down from their positions.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin revealed in July that he was stepping down as CEO, a position he had held since the company was founded in 2007. His replacement will be ex-Googler Chris O'Neill, who most recently ran the business operations at research unit Google X.