CIA-backed firm invests in social media monitoring

A CIA-sponsored investment company called In-Q-Tel has bought into Visible Technologies, a company that provides a social media monitoring technology called truCast.

TruCast powers services that let companies monitor how often subjects are being discussed on Twitter and in other forms of online social conversation. In a statement on Friday, In-Q-Tel's head of architecture and engineering, Troy Pearsall, said truCast would help his company keep an eye on online conversation trends.

"Visible Technologies' platform is key to understanding the breadth and depth of the online social landscape," Pearsall said. "Its platform delivers a clear and comprehensive view of complex information, integrating real-time data into a navigable and easy-to-use application that understands the context and tone of online dialogue."

The truCast platform is already used by companies such as Microsoft and Xerox.

In-Q-Tel was founded by the CIA in 1999 as an independent not-for-profit organisation, to help the US intelligence community find and work with emerging commercial technology companies. The company aims to accelerate the development of technologies that the intelligence community wants to use.