Nick Halstead

Nicholas John Halstead (born 9 April 1972 in Kent) is a retired British racing driver, software engineer and entrepreneur who most recently competed in the British Touring Car Championship for Motor Parts Direct with Power Maxed Racing. Halstead has previously competed in British GT and the Ginetta GT4 Supercup. He won the AM title in the 2018 Ginetta GT5 Challenge, and made his British Touring Car Championship debut at Croft in 2021, substituting for Rick Parfitt Jr. at Excelr8 with TradePriceCars.com.^[1]

Halstead is the founder of companies such as Infosum, Datasift and TweetMeme, the latter of which was the first site containing the retweet feature, before it was sold to Twitter in 2010.^[2]

Career

Fav.or.it

In October 2007, the Fav.or.it company was founded, a proposed blog commenting system founded on principle that consumers and businesses both need content curated. The site was launched in 2008, and quickly built to 500,000 monthly users.^[2]

TweetMeme

In January 2008, the first prototype of TweetMeme was released, a site founded by Halstead which tracked trending topics on the social media giant Twitter. The site would find new topics being talked about, and would track numbers talking about them to rank them, an aggregator.^[3] The full site was then launched to the public in July the same year.

In February 2009, the retweet button was released onto the website, a feature allowing you to share posts you liked. Although this feature was founded on the TweetMeme website, it soon became a standard feature of almost all forum and social media sites, with approximately 1.6 billion retweet buttons across different pages on the internet.^[4]

On 12 August 2010, the retweet feature was sold to Twitter,^[5] and the website was shut down in September 2012, when it still had 3 million users at the time.

DataSift

Halstead announced DataSift in September 2010 at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, a social data platform that provides brands and enterprises with access to content from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and dozens of other social networks.^[6] The software was officially released in November 2011.^[7]

Halstead stepped down as CEO of the company in October 2015.^{[citation needed]}

InfoSum

In late 2015, Halstead founded Cognitive Logic, a data collaboration company. It was rebranded to InfoSum in September 2017.^[2]

Racing career

Ginetta GT5 Challenge

In 2017, Halstead would make his professional racing debut in the Ginetta GT5 Challenge with Fox Motorsport. Competing in the AM class, in this year he would pick up ten podiums in the class to finish third in the AM standings.^{[citation needed]}

Halstead would continue with Fox Motorsport in the AM class in 2018, where with four in-class victories he would go on to win the AM title.^{[citation needed]}

In 2019, Halstead made the switch to the Pro class, still competing with Fox Motorsport, where he had a best finish of 11th.^[8]

Ginetta GT4 Supercup

Competing in a handful of races in series such as TCR UK^[9] and the Renault Clio Cup UK alongside his Ginetta GT5 campaign across 2019, in 2020, Halstead would step up to the Ginetta GT4 Supercup, competing in the Pro-AM class still with Fox Motorsport.^[8] Across this season in his class he racked up three wins, 15 podiums, three pole positions and four fastest laps on his way to third in the championship standings.

With Fox Motorsport, Halstead would compete in the rounds at Oulton Park and Brands Hatch in 2021 in the Pro-AM class, scoring a second-place finish at Brands Hatch.^{[citation needed]}

Halstead continued in the championship with Fox Motorsport in 2022 in the G55 Pro class alongside his British GT campaign.^{[citation needed]}

British GT

Halstead made his British GT debut in 2021, racing a McLaren 570S in the GT4 Pro-AM class alongside teammate Jamie Stanley.^[10] The duo achieved two wins in class over the course of seven races to finish second in the GT4 Pro-AM cup and tied 8th overall in the GT4 category.

Halstead continued with Fox Motorsport in the series in 2022, this time switching to the GT3 category.^[11]

British Touring Car Championship

Halstead made his British Touring Car Championship debut at Croft in 2021, substituting for Rick Parfitt Jr. at Excelr8 with TradePriceCars.com.^[1] Over the course of the weekend, Halstead finished in a better position every race, driving home to 21st position in Race 3.

Racing record

Racing career summary

† As Halstead didn't complete more than one round, he was not eligible for points. ^* Season still in progress.

Complete British GT Championship results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Complete British Touring Car Championship results

(key) Races in bold indicate pole position (1 point awarded – 2002–2003 all races, 2004–present just in first race) Races in italics indicate fastest lap (1 point awarded all races) * signifies that driver lead race for at least one lap (1 point awarded – 2002 just in feature races, 2003–present all races)

Complete Asian Le Mans Series results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

References

1. ^ "NICK HALSTEAD TO SUBSTITUTE FOR RICK PARFITT AT CROFT". BTCC. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
2. ^ "About Nick Halstead". Nick Halstead. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
3. ^ "Tweetmeme arrives to track Twitter's hottest links". TechCrunch. 28 January 2008. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
4. ^ "What Exactly Do 1.6 Billion Retweet Buttons Get You? About 6 Million Actual Retweets.". TechCrunch. 21 August 2009. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
5. ^ "Pushing Our (Tweet) Button". Twitter Blog. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
6. ^ "Tweetmeme Founder's Datasift Helps You Find A Needle In A Tweetstack". TechCrunch. 27 September 2010. Retrieved 2 November 2021.
7. ^ "DataSift Launches Powerful Twitter Data Analysis And Business Intelligence Platform". TechCrunch. 16 November 2011. Retrieved 3 November 2021.
8. ^ "Former Ginetta Champion Nick Halstead Joins Millers Oils Ginetta GT4 SuperCup". Ginetta. 12 March 2020. Retrieved 6 November 2021.
9. ^ "Nick Halstead joins TCR UK for three events in Fox Motorsport Honda". TouringCarTimes. 29 May 2019. Retrieved 6 November 2021.
10. ^ "Fox Motorsport Return With GT4 McLaren In 2021". dailysportscar.com. Retrieved 6 November 2021.
11. ^ "Fox Motorsport Step Up To GT3 With Halstead, Stanley & McLaren 720S GT3". dailysportscar.com. Retrieved 1 March 2022.
12. ^ "British GT Championship - Rounds 1 & 2 - 15th & 17th April - Oulton Park - 2017". TSL Timing. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
13. ^ "British GT Championship - Rounds 1 & 2 - 31st March & 2nd April - Oulton Park - 2018". TSL Timing. Retrieved 29 June 2022.
14. ^ "British Touring Car Championship - Round 9 - 28th/29th September - Silverstone - 2019". TSL Timing. Retrieved 29 June 2022.

External links

• Official website