Portland-based social search startup raises $2.7 million in funding

A good salesperson might have terrific social skills – great at chatting up a client, terrific at keeping track of what sports a customer likes, who wants tickets to a big concert and knowing what products a big buyer favors. But those real-world social skills don’t necessarily translate to social networking. Portland startup Little Bird aims to bring marketing and sales into the social age, mining Twitter and other social networks to find who’s most influential on a given topic.

Little Bird, a Portland-based startup that helps businesses identify top influencers on social media, today announced$1.7 million in additional funding and two new executives. The new investment was led by Oregon Angel Fund and ups total funding for the company to $2.7 million. Little Bird, an alum of Portland’s PIE incubator, was founded in October 2012 by Marshall Kirkpatrick, a former journalist at ReadWrite and TechCrunch. The startup, which is also backed by Mark Cuban, helps businesses figure out who on social media can best spread their message about any topic.