Geofeedia

About Geofeedia

Geofeedia was a location-based social media intelligence platform founded in 2011 by Phil Harris, Mike Mulroy, and Scott Mitchell. The company was established in Chicago and developed a patented technology to aggregate and analyze geotagged social media data from various platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Its core product allowed users to define a specific geographic area and monitor all public social media posts originating from that location in real-time, filling a data gap left by traditional keyword and hashtag monitoring.

The business model was subscription-based, serving a diverse client base that included marketing organizations, media companies like CNN, corporate security teams, and event managers. Geofeedia's platform offered features such as real-time alerts, data visualization on interactive maps, and sentiment analysis. A significant portion of its business, however, was focused on the public sector, with over 500 law enforcement and public safety agencies using the tool for situational awareness, crisis response, and identifying witnesses or threats. The company raised a total of $26 million in funding over several rounds, with a notable $17.1 million Series B in February 2016 led by Silversmith Capital Partners.

The company's trajectory shifted dramatically in October 2016. An investigation by the ACLU revealed that Geofeedia was marketing its services to law enforcement agencies as a tool to monitor activists and protesters, specifically referencing its use during events in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore. The report disclosed that Geofeedia had special API access to data from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which was then provided to police departments. This use case violated the terms of service of the social media giants, which prohibited the use of their data for surveillance. In response to the ACLU's findings, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter swiftly suspended Geofeedia's access to their data feeds, effectively crippling its core service. Despite a public commitment to privacy from CEO Phil Harris, the loss of its primary data sources proved fatal for the company's business model, leading to its eventual shutdown.