$9 million in funding for data firm Media6Degrees

Media6Degrees, a firm that provides data on social-network activity to marketers and advertisers, announced Thursday that it has raised $9 million in venture funding in a Series A round led by U.S. Venture Partners.

The New York-headquartered company had already received seed funding from Contour Venture Partners, Coriolis Ventures, and a number of angel investors.

According to its Web site, Media6Degrees uses "patent pending algorithms and methods (to) connect a brand's existing customers with user segments composed entirely of consumers who are interwoven via the social graph." The company is helmed by Joe Doran, former general manager of Microsoft's Ad Center.

"Media6Degrees is revolutionary," Tim Connors, general partner at U.S. Venture Partners, said of the investment. He'll be joining the company's board along with fellow venture partner Ted Maidenberg. "It is the first company we have seen to tap the potential of social data for advertisers."

Revolutionary or not, it isn't the only player in its field: a few other social-media analytics companies have emerged in the past year or so, all promising to make some sense of the messy blog-and-Twitter show.