Social media conversation aggregator Talkwheel has secured $1.2 million in a new funding round. The startup gathers topics being talked about on social media and the web and arranges them in a wheel format, according to TechCrunch.

The investment was provided by Peter Horan from About.com, former Yahoo exec Randy Haykin, Roger Sippl of Informix, Young Song of nComputing, Payam Zamani of Reply.com, Larry Braitman of Adify, Tom Shields of Yieldex, and David Jeske of eGroups. Other angel investors also participated in the round, the report detailed.

Talkwheel chief executive officer (CEO) Jeff Harris said the startup's product is able to "visually map hundreds of thousands of people in the conversation and shows you the most relevant conversations."

Harris also said this function is very useful for brands. Talkwheel creates a wheel where web and social media conversations can be monitored. The information gleaned from the visual map can be used to see the current trending topics. This way, they will be able to join in the discussions relevant to their sector, TechCrunch explained.