Overtone's $7m for Social Media Listening

US social media monitoring firm Overtone has raised $7m in funding, which it plans to use to grow its customer base, and develop new software features and capabilities.

Overtone delivers real-time customer intelligence through its OpenMic listening system, which extracts intelligence from unstructured customer-generated content.

The firm has just expanded this offering through the launch of OpenMic GameVoice - a report which analyzes millions of consumer conversations from popular online video game communities. Additionally, the company has partnered with Mindshare Technologies, to provide social media analytics for users of the latter's customer survey solutions.

'We're pleased with the growing awareness by major consumer brands about the benefits of online customer listening programs,' states President and CEO Craig Brennan. 'The latest funding enables us to further expand our service offerings to help our customers get to the next level in their customer listening programs, and pave the way for advancement of our OpenMic listening system.'

The Series C round of funding was led by ABS Ventures and Dolphin Equity Partners.

Separately, the firm has appointed Eric Zankman as Senior Vice President of Professional Services. Prior to joining, he served as VP of Client Services for Utopy, where he deployed voice-of-the-customer solutions. Before this, he led a Customer Analytics consulting practice at American Management System (AMS), and worked as Operations Research Consultant at Bank of America.

In his new role he will lead all consulting and professional services efforts, including voice-of-the-customer insight consulting services, support and account management.

Web site: www.overtone.com .