Austin, Texas – May 16, 2012 – Mass Relevance, the technology leader in social curation and integration, today announced that it has closed $3.3 million in venture capital funding.  The Series A round is led by Austin Ventures and includes new investor Battery Ventures as well as existing investors Floodgate Fund, Allegro Venture Partners and Metamorphic Ventures.  Mass Relevance will use the new financing to accelerate growth for the company’s platform among media, entertainment, consumer brands and retailers.

The financing comes as leading brands, ranging from Madonna and MTV through Target and Purina, turn to Mass Relevance to use real-time social content to drive engagement on television, web and mobile.  Fifteen months after its launch with two customers, the company now serves 120 clients and more than doubled revenue expectations in fiscal year 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. Mass Relevance clients include the “Big Four” television networks, 7 of the top 10 2011 cable networks, as well as top brands like Target, Cisco, Ford, Samsung, New York Giants, Pepsi, Purell and Victoria’s Secret.

“People around the world are actively participating in social conversations about brands, media and entertainment, and this content is passing us by faster than ever before,” said Sam Decker, founder and CEO of Mass Relevance.  “Brands are realizing the opportunity to capture these conversations and integrate them across their marketing efforts in order to engage and activate their audiences – ultimately driving social buzz and sales for their brand. With the Mass Relevance platform brands can aggregate and filter the world’s social conversations to build safe and controlled social experiences that integrate anywhere the brand lives.”

In the past 9 months alone, Mass Relevance has delivered more than 3 billion pieces of social content to multiple digital surfaces (curated from over 9 billion pieces flowing through the Mass Relevance platform) to support iconic events like the Super Bowl and Academy Awards, launches such as The Avengers and Madonna MDNA, and television phenoms American Idol, X-Factor, 80 Plates and The Voice.  Mass Relevance has also seen significant traction with innovative global brands, such as Pepsi who is currently using the Mass Relevance platform to bring fresh #livefornow content across the Pepsi.com homepage.

“Mass Relevance is a strategic partner who can meet the technology and creative challenges of bringing the voices of millions into our brand,” said Shiv Singh, head of Digital at PepsiCo Beverages.  “As a platform, they offer the scalability, functionality and reliability that we need to be successful – and the strong design sensibility to make these engagement really stand out.”

Mass Relevance’s growth is driven by its technology innovation, strong partner ecosystem and proven client success. The company continually innovates new products and approaches, and has achieved significant milestones since launch, including:

• Industry’s first partnership with Twitter in November 2011 to help media and brands generate new revenue from real-time content.  Twitter selected Mass Relevance as its first curation partner licensed to re-syndicate public Tweets for display, allowing Mass Relevance clients to directly monetize social content through sponsorships or direct response.
• A growing partner roster that includes Chyron, Ross Video and most recently Resource Interactive, to create new revenue streams around integrated experiences on TV, web, mobile and large-screen displays.
• Ongoing product introductions such as the March 2012 release of Companion™, a flexible, HTML5 responsive UI second-screen product for brands and media. Companion™ provides a rich, interactive second screen experience that encourages participation, amplification and social following.
• Powering traditional media’s Twitter integrations for some of the biggest events in the world in the past year, including the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, Grammy’s and Super Bowl. The company managed the global Twitter Q&A for Madonna’s first-ever Twitter appearance and her MDNA album launch, which garnered more than 1400 tweet per minute at its peak and nearly 180,000 total approved Tweets during the event.

“Mass Relevance is pioneering this space and is experiencing phenomenal growth in a short amount of time for their platform in media and entertainment. It’s great to be behind another rising Austin social software company built by Austin entrepreneurs. We’re very excited about the company and our continued investment,” said Mike Dodd, Partner at Austin Ventures.

“One thing we know very clearly from investing in the space:  brands are fighting to manage and engage a massive fire hose of social media content, and they need help,” said Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner, Battery Ventures.  “Mass Relevance is the only solution for real-time curation and distribution of social media content at scale — across any device, site or channel.  The team is proven, the technology is ahead of the pack by far, and they are already making an impact with some of the biggest brands and media companies in the world.  The opportunity here is huge.”

About Mass Relevance

Based in Austin, Texas, Mass Relevance enables entertainment, media, retail, and manufacturing brands to drive real-time engagement through social curation and integration. The company provides a flexible, robust platform to facilitate audience and consumer interactions in a relevant, moderated way that is proven to deliver measurable results. Brands using Mass Relevance include NBC Sports, Thomson Reuters, Al Jazeera MTV Networks, Cisco, Samsung, Target, Victoria’s Secret, Pepsi, and Golden Globe Awards.

The company is privately held with venture capital funding. For more information, please visit the company’s website atwww.massrelevance.com.

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It wasn’t just her crazy concert going fans that showed up to chat. Everybody who idolizes the material girl, from the average fan, to celebrities, to industry experts, joined in. Madonna’s conversations ranged from a quick answer of a question posted by a fan, to back and forth dialogue with Britney Spears, Lionel Richie and Perez Hilton.

How it was done
Using the Mass Relevance platform Madonna’s fans were able to view the Q&A live on Madonna.com/AskMadonna. All questions including #AskMadonna or mentioning @MaddonaMDNAday were filtered and then put into the queue for Madonna to answer. As she answered the questions her replies were tagged via the Mass Relevance platform and matched with the corresponding question making it easy for fans to follow the conversation.

Connecting fans to the brand = success
A social strategy that intimately connects fans to a brand can drive to strong engagement results. Madonna’s follower count grew roughly 300% over the course of the two Q&A sessions that were a week a part. Over 179,400 approved questions were received over the two different events. At its peak, the conversation generated 1,434 Tweets per minute(TPM), with an overall average of 635 TPM. At 10:26, before Madonna had announced her arrival the TPM hit its low of 228. Just six minutes later, when she announced her arrival the conversation spiked to its peak TPM of 1,434.
This may leave you asking, when will the “material girl” take the reigns of her account again? A question no one knows that answer to. All we do know is that she hit #1 on the Billboard charts, a place she has become very accustomed to.

I’ve studied marketing and word of mouth for 20 years. Marketers love control, but over the last several years of social media growth we, as marketers, feel we’ve lost some control. That’s not a bad thing. If you have a great product or service and you know how to facilitate rather than broadcast, you can catapult past competition.

In 1995 I wrote a book called “How to Market WITH Computer User Groups.” Back then, user group leaders and members (i.e. the geeks) were the analog version of every person in today’s digital participation culture.  The point of the capitalized “WITH” in the book title is that it was ineffective to market “TO” user group leaders. The only way to be effective was for them to be the voice. It was important for them to own the message. And for the marketer, to enable them by reflecting the voice of the customers back onto them. Marketing with a mirror.

Today, that principle is true far beyond 4,000 user groups in 1995…it’s applicable to hundreds of millions of consumers with a keyboard, tablet and phone. Did you know in 12 years 75% of the workforce will be made up of Millenials who have grown up in the participation culture? We’ve already seen the pull that technology and this generation has on marketing. If you haven’t figured out how to harness and integrate that participation into your own marketing, then you have truly lost control.

I know companies who think of their social strategy in terms of a putting up a Facebook page, getting likes or just tweeting to followers. But did you know that approximately only 7% of your Facebook fans see your posts and .002% engage in those posts? I don’t know about you, but my Twitter stream is filling up and passing me by.

When you integrate social content (earned media) into your ‘owned’ media (your mirrors), you are reflecting the voice of customers back to the masses. You are giving customers the social proof they need to be engaged and interested, because what they are watching is assumedly a reflection of themselves. Moreover, when customers see that they are being recognized and are reflected, they are more likely to participate themselves. It’s why we saw a 600% increase in Tweets when we put up a Twitter counter on XFactor.  Even more than TV, marketers own lots of mirrors. In fact, it’s getting out of control how many digital surfaces marketers have to manage. They need help.

I’m betting our company that the next phase of marketing will be integration of real-time, relevant social content & experiences into owned media. I’m in good company, with Shiv Singh (VP at Pepsi and Mass Relevance client) having bet his career on the concept of real-time marketing…a related concept.  These ideas combine the need of your audience to see themselves in a social mirror with the requirement of marketers to ‘be in control’ (airquotes). Growth of participation and user generated content is not slowing. The fragmentation of your customers’ attention across a growing distribution of digital surfaces is not slowing. And the desire for participatory experiences continues to expand amongst a population that will be spending towards your growth.

As a word-of-mouth marketer and customer advocate enthusiast, being part of this next epoch in marketing is a blast! Or as my toddler might say, it’s “funner”. In the coming months you will see more from Mass Relevance on new ways you can integrate social experiences into your marketing activities. And how we can have fun together!

Oh what the hell…just call us now. It’s hard to keep secrets from future clients!

 AUSTIN, TEXAS – April 3, 2012 – Mass Relevance, the technology leader in social curation and integration, today announced the appointment of Matt Corey as Chief Marketing Officer.

A 15-year marketing veteran and former CMO of Golfsmith, Corey has spent his career delivering digital and social innovations that drive value for both consumers and brands. In his role at Mass Relevance, he will lead the company’s marketing and product strategy, driving the product roadmap for Mass Relevance’s growing client base, which includes Target, NBC Sports, New York Giants, MSNBC, The Oscars, Universal Music Group, Victoria’s Secret, Golf Digest, and Al Jazeera.

“Matt brings a progressive mindset towards marketing and a tremendous track record of success,”

said Mass Relevance CEO Sam Decker. “His perspective towards innovation and results is directly reflected in our client base, and his leadership will be tremendously valuable as momentum continues to accelerate for Mass Relevance’s unique blend of social curation, data visualization and cross-functional integration. “

As CMO of Golfsmith, Corey most recently led the way in turning Golfsmith from a club-making brand into a world-class brand, driving Golfsmith’s multi-channel marketing and ecommerce operations. Corey served as a pioneer in launching new products and software solutions at the company, including being the first retailer in the U.S. to launch Bazaarvoice’s Ratings and Reviews in 2005. During this time he also oversaw marketing efforts around the company’s initial public offering.

Prior to this, he served as VP of Marketing and E-Commerce for The Bombay Company, and lead marketing and e-commerce at The Home Depot helping the company launch its first-ever e-commerce web site in 2000. At Home Depot, he also launched the inaugural interactive “home visualizer” design center for HomeDepot.com in 2002 in partnership with Adobe Scene7 that is still live today.

“Mass Relevance has hit the tipping point, and is moving into hyper-growth,” said Corey.  “The company has been part of every major mass cultural event this winter – the Super Bowl, Golden Globes, Oscars, even last week’s Madonna album launch – with a value proposition that touches the top items on the executive marketing agenda: social engagement, second screen experiences, return on engagement, and content marketing.  This is an incredibly exciting time, and a huge opportunity to help create the next era of marketing and media.  I couldn’t be happier to join Sam and the Mass Relevance team.”

Since launching in December 2010, Mass Relevance has seen explosive adoption and emerged as the leader in helping consumer brands effectively use real-time social content to drive engagement on television, web and mobile. The company has powered the Twitter strategy for some of the biggest events in the world, including the Academy Awards, Grammy’s, NHL Awards, Katy Perry’s California Dreams Tour and The White House Twitter Town Hall. Moreover, the company has been an integral part of some of the largest, most watched media brands in the country, including NBC, FOX, A&E, and MTV Networks.

 About Mass Relevance

Based in Austin, Texas, Mass Relevance enables entertainment, media, retail, and manufacturing brands to drive real-time engagement through social curation. The company provides a flexible, robust platform to facilitate audience and consumer interactions in a relevant, moderated way that is proven to deliver measurable results.  Brands using Mass Relevance include RIM, NBC Sports, Xbox 360, Samsung, Cisco, National Instruments, and Golden Globe Awards, and the company recently partnered with Twitter on President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall.

The company is privately held with venture capital funding. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.massrelevance.com.

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Beginning in the preseason, the Giants tapped into the Twitter conversation by promoting #NYGiants on-screen during games. The prominent and persistent display of a hashtag is a proven tactic for prompting an organized conversation on Twitter. The Giants curated this conversation and showcased relevant tweets in the lower-third banner on-screen. The on-air call-to-action, persistent hashtag, and pay-off display of relevant tweets is the perfect recipe for stimulating a robust conversation with viewers watching the game.

Ny Giants ribbon Tweet in-stadium display

The curated Twitter conversation also became a prominent part of the Giants experience in the stadium itself. Relevant tweets were displayed in the ribbon graphics around MetLife Stadium, providing thousands of fans another reason to participate in the #NYGiants conversation taking place on Twitter.

NY Giants engage fans post game

Facilitating conversation about the team during the game is paramount, but the Giants also looked for ways this season to engage with fans when the players weren’t on the field. One of their more clever solutions was through a weekly Twitter poll that went up on Giants.com after each game. For the next several days the poll asked fans to vote on the “Extra Effort” player of the last game. The benefit here is when a fan votes in a Twitter poll their vote goes out as a tweet, amplifying the brand and message. It’s a simple mechanism to engage fans with a direct call-to-action after a game with the added bonus of amplification.

The Giants’ efforts to engage with fans before, during and after games through multiple social media touchpoints paid off with high levels of engagement and a large number of new followers. Watch Don Sperling, VP and executive producer of NY Giants Entertainment, discuss their successes with Bloomberg TV.

Read more: Inside the Marketing Playbook of the New York Giants
http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/inside-marketing-playbook-york-giants/232792/

Our SXSW Social Viewer was in full swing – curating over 1.4M Tweets to date – and still counting. If you missed checking it out for Interactive, you can still access it and stay connected with what’s happening now during the music portion of SXSW.

We also used our platform to keep track of a few key moments and data points from SXSWi. Check them out here.

Twitter itself got a big head start itself during the 2007 SXSW Interactive, winning an award in the “Blog” category, and many other big names in tech have grabbed up awards and acclaim at the event over the years.

The buzz matters at an event like SXSW, and there’s really no better way to gauge buzz than by following the tweets.

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/who-was-the-twitter-darling-of-sxsw-infographic_b19507

http://www.lostremote.com/2012/03/15/social-tv-highlights-and-takeaways-from-sxsw/

The hundreds of companies that used South by Southwest Interactive to find customers, investors, new workers and business allies took a breather Wednesday after the festival wrapped up the night before.

But not a long one.

Sam Decker, CEO of Mass Relevance, which used the event as a venue for business meetings with dozens of potential customers, said he slept in two hours later than normal Wednesday, after working 15 hours a day for the previous five days at the festival. Then it was back to work.

http://www.statesman.com/business/tech-companies-say-they-got-a-boost-from-2238358.html

http://www.austin360.com/music/from-sxsw-past-comes-program-that-melds-events-2235144.html