Founder and CEO Moshe Elgressy (pictured) says the platform – an “online intelligence marketplace” – is being targeted principally at small and medium-sized enterprises – the kind of firms that might not have the resources to fund an in-house business and competitor intelligence analyst.

Data Layers has been designed to work almost like a social network, but where the content being shared is news, information and insight rather than personal details.

It is free to sign up to the service and once users are logged in they can begin searching for research streams to follow, based on their particular interests. These streams might be market-level, or brand and product specific – their breadth and focus is determined by the stream’s curator.

Anybody can become a stream curator, and through their stream they can share news updates and articles of interest, appended with their own insights and analysis.

Curators can choose whether a stream is public, private or premium. Access to premium streams is charged at $29 a month, with the curator and Data Layers entering into a revenue-share arrangement. Streams can also be locked down to specific companies, so only those who share the same email server domain can gain access to them.

Users can vote streams up and down according to how useful and interesting they find them, providing an incentive for competing experts to provide fast, regular and insightful updates.

Data Layers has been in private beta since April. People wanting to join the beta ahead of the public launch next quarter can register their interest at www.datalayers.com.