Mass Relevance Partners with Twitter to Help Media and Brands Generate New Revenue from Real-Time Content
Mass Relevance is first curation partner licensed to re-syndicate Twitter content for display purposes, providing a one-stop shop for publishers for Twitter monetization through curation
Joins elite group of companies granted access to Twitter Firehose to enhance proven, scalable curation platform used by NBC, MTV Networks, Samsung, Pepsi, and NY Times
Austin, Texas – November 7, 2011 – Mass Relevance today announced that it has been selected by Twitter as the first curation partner officially licensed to re-syndicate Twitter content. Content publishers can now work directly with Mass Relevance to publish and display syndicated Twitter content, as well as directly monetize the content through sponsorships or direct response. Through this partnership, companies will be able to move beyond engagement and create new revenue streams around curated and integrated experiences into TV, web, mobile and large-screen displays.
“Media companies and brands have always found social content to be extremely engaging, but in the past third parties have not been able to syndicate Twitter content,” said Sam Decker, CEO of Mass Relevance, who was previously founding CMO of Bazaarvoice. “This partnership enables any brand that publishes content to log into our platform, filter and moderate content, display with customized or productized visualizations, and (for media) sell advertising against the content. There are over 250 million Tweets a day, and we can help brands find further, structured value in the massive growth of social conversations. It is a big honor to be Twitter’s partner, and this will be transformational for content publishers and advertisers.”
Through the Mass Relevance platform, which harnesses Twitter’s Firehose, content publishers will now have a complete solution to source, aggregate, filter and visualize syndicated Twitter content from a licensed company to any output they would like – from Twitter streams to geo-maps to standalone microsites. Mass Relevance platform provides out-of-the-box visualized modules or API access to work directly with agencies to create experiences that fit into TV, web sites, mobile devices, or full screen display. These outputs can then be sponsored, bringing in additional revenues for content publishers or drive customer behavior for brands – with all content licensed through Mass Relevance. Mass Relevance also offers strategic services, including labs, curation consulting, design and support.
Examples of Sponsored Integrations
NBC’s The Voice
During the Summer of 2011, NBC’s The Voice used the Mass Relevance Platform to integrate real-time social content into its weekly, live broadcast and official website. The hottest new show of the season, The Voice offered a highly engaging experience that put Twitter and other social media at the core of the live broadcast and encourages fans to participate in a 24/7 social media conversation with the show’s artists and celebrity coaches. Mass Relevance supported this strategy with a robust infrastructure that aggregated and displayed real-time social content at a massive scale, and immediately fed the freshest, most relevant tweets to The Voice’s social media V-room for on-air use.
E! Online and the Oscars
In February, 2011 Mass Relevance partnered with E! Online to create a microsite featuring the best Twitter content from the Oscars. During the show, the Mass Relevance platform filtered through 1.8 million Tweets to publish the best Tweets from the crowds, nominees, and pundits. They also published photo galleries and leaderboards indicating nominee buzz. Sixty-four percent of the visitors to this site were new to E! Online and spent an average of six page views per visit.
“We see significant demand from brands, publishers, and TV networks who need help expanding their content to include compelling Twitter integrations,” said Chloe Sladden, Twitter Director of Content and Programming. “This partnership with Mass Relevance will make it easier than ever for media companies to deliver great Twitter experiences for their readers and viewers.”
Since launching in 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 2011 Academy Awards, NHL Awards, Katy Perry’s California Dreams Tour and, most recently, The White House Twitter Town Hall. Moreover, the company has been an integral part of some of the largest, most watched television shows in the country, including NBC’s The Voice, FOX’s The X Factor and A&E’s Project Runway.
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 NBC Sports, Thomson Reuters, Al Jazeera MTV Networks, Cisco, Samsung, Pepsi, and Golden Globe Awards.
The company is privately held with venture capital funding. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.massrelevance.com.
Giants Kickoff Season With Real-Time Social Integration
Giants Become First NFL Team To Display Live Fan Tweets During Course Of Their Television Game Broadcast, Debuts This Saturday Against The Jets
East Rutherford, N.J. – August 25, 2011 – The New York Giants announced today that they have teamed up with Mass Relevance, the technology leader in social curation, to unveil several new social initiatives for Big Blue fans attending games at the newly-named MetLife Stadium as well as for those watching the live televised broadcasts. Beginning with Saturday’s pre-season contest against the New York Jets, these initiatives will continue and expand throughout the season.
The Giants social enhancements include the use of Twitter to engage and entertain fans who tune into the TV broadcasts of Big Blue’s final two preseason games, as well as the integration of real-time fan tweets on MetLife Stadium’s video boards and other stadium distribution channels. The Giants will become the first NFL team to use the popular social media platform as part of their TV game broadcast.
Additionally, the Giants will debut a new open voting system during the regular season that will allow fans to pick their player of the game in real-time using Twitter hashtags – and get a weeklong discount on the winner’s merchandise from the Giants online store. The initiatives are powered by Mass Relevance’s scalable technology platform that allows the Giants to instantly aggregate, curate and deliver the best fan content into stadium displays, TV broadcasts and Giants.com.
“With over 6.4M fans in the tri-state area and one of the largest national fan bases in the NFL, our social media strategy is designed entirely around giving them the best way to share their passion – and the Giants experience – with each other,” said Giants Chief Marketing Officer Mike Stevens. “We have the advantage of playing in an incredible state-of-the-art stadium that lets us do some amazing things to share content to fans in the seats, as well as our viewers at home. This is a great value added for our fans and our organization.”
“Whether it is entertainment, politics or sports, real-time social content plays a key role in enhancing the experience whether you are participating live, watching on TV or following online,” said Mass Relevance CEO Sam Decker. “We’re really excited to work with the New York Giants to kick off an exciting strategy to build fan engagement and momentum in the run-up to the 2011 season.”
The Giant’s new social initiatives include:
Bringing Social Content to the Game
- Curate and publish a live stream of fan content on LED video towers (pylons) at the stadium entry in order to pump up tailgaters and build even more excitement for the match up with the Jets.
- Display relevant live tweets on the stadium video boards, as well as on the “ribbon” LED display that separates the stadium levels.
- Stream fan comments to more than 2,200 flat screen TVs located throughout MetLife Stadium.
- During halftime, the Giants will provide an open Twitter Q&A session with the Radio Voice of the Giants Bob Papa and Analyst Carl Banks.
- With the Giants celebrating their 25th Anniversary of their first Super Bowl this year, fans will also get to have a live Twitter chat with a member from that team every home game.
Real-Time Social Voting
- For each regular season game, the Giants will select three players and assign a Twitter hashtag to each.
- Each of the three players will accrue votes based on how many mentions each hashtag gets during the given time period.
- The micro site will show a running total of votes for each respective player.
- The player who receives the most votes will have their merchandise discounted for the following week at the Giants online store.
On-Air Social Content
- The August 27th game will be broadcast live on NBC 4 New York, with full integration of hyper-relevant social content into the live broadcasts of the game.
- The Giants will integrate live tweets into their broadcast from fans during the most exciting moments in their final two preseason games.
- Fans will have the opportunity to have their own personal voices integrated into the broadcast experience – and benefit from the insights and comments of other die-hard Giants fans.
- The Giants will produce brand new live pre- and post-game shows that will incorporate live Twitter comments and Q&A’s with the hosts.
Powerful Back-End
- The Mass Relevance Platform uniquely combines a cutting-edge social technology that can instantly aggregate, curate and deliver the best content for any context with an enterprise SaaS infrastructure to meet the needs of the Fortune 500 – at a scale of tens of thousands of Tweets per second and less than a second to publish to a real-time experience.
- Mass Relevance has powered successful integrated Twitter strategies for media, entertainment and consumer brands such as Cisco, Dick Clark Productions, E! Online, ITV, MTV, NBC Sports and Pepsi. The company recently partnered with Twitter to power President Barack Obama’s July 2011 Twitter Town Hall.
Connect with the Giants
@Giants on Twitter
Facebook/NewYorkGiants
www.giants.com
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.
Mass Relevance Curates Real-Time Twitter Content for MTV Networks
Technology integrates real-time tweets for web, mobile, tablet and live shows for MTV Networks brands
Austin, Texas – July 26, 2011 – Mass Relevance today announced that MTV Networks is using the Mass Relevance Platform to curate and analyze real-time social content across a wide range of brand experiences. Using Mass Relevance, MTV Networks aggregates, filters, moderates, and delivers real-time Twitter content to create engaging interactions with its audiences and power voting for award shows including the 2011 mtvU Woodie Awards, VH1’s Big Morning Buzz Live and Logo’s NewNowNext Awards and RuPaul’s Drag Race.
“Our producers use the Mass Relevance technology to power social data products and experiences across our brands, through data curation, moderation and visualization,” said Jacob Shwirtz Director of Social Viewing at MTV Networks. “Mass Relevance’s committed service and unique capabilities have helped MTV Networks deliver new and compelling experiences to our fans and users.”
“MTV Networks is known for being on the cutting edge,” said Sam Decker, CEO of Mass Relevance. “Twitter, with its explosive growth with young people, offers a tremendous opportunity to fuse together online, broadcast and social in a new kind of brand experience. Our platform offers the scale and technology to enable the massive amount of social conversations and data to be collected and displayed in a way that allows MTV Networks to innovate new ways to engage fans and catalyze conversations happening online. We’re very excited to work with them in bringing the very best to their audiences.”
Launched in December 2010, Mass Relevance help consumer brands effectively use real-time social content to drive engagement on television, web and mobile. The platform uniquely combines a cutting-edge social technology that can instantly aggregate, curate and deliver the best content for any context with an enterprise SaaS infrastructure to meet the needs of the Fortune 500. Mass Relevance has powered successful integrated Twitter strategies for media, entertainment and consumer brands such as NBC Sports, Cisco, E! Online, ITV, Dick Clark Productions, and Pepsi.
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 NBC Sports, Xbox 360, Samsung, Cisco, Pepsi, and Golden Globe Awards.
The company is privately held with venture capital funding. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.massrelevance.com.
Mass Relevance Teams with Twitter to Help Power President Obama’s Twitter Town Hall
Mass Relevance platform brings live, relevant content to Twitter Town Hall
Austin, Texas — July 5, 2011 – Mass Relevance, the technology leader in social curation, today announced that it has teamed up with Twitter to help bring the voice of the nation to the Twitter Town Hall happening on Wednesday, July 6 at 2 p.m. EDT. The Mass Relevance Platform is powering several key pieces of this brand-new town hall experience, including integrating live Tweets into the Town Hall homepage hosted by Twitter, and helping to bring live questions and red-hot trend data to President Obama and Town Hall participants throughout the event.
“Tomorrow’s Town Hall is an opportunity for anyone on Twitter to ask President Obama about the economic issues that matter most to them,” said Adam Sharp, Twitter manager of government and political partnerships. “Mass Relevance is helping to bring the Town Hall to life by providing real-time curation and social integration that captures and displays a national conversation.”
Powering http://askobama.twitter.com
As part of the initiative, Mass Relevance and the Mass Relevance Platform are aggregating and filtering questions marked with the hashtag #AskObama, and integrating the most relevant conversations for http://askobama.twitter.com, a special site created just for the event. The site will feature Tweets with questions and discussion from across the Twitterverse, as well as a livestream of the event and a window where people can tweet their questions for President Obama.
Twitter Town Hall
Working closely with Twitter, Mass Relevance is also helping to weave the questions directly into the Twitter Town Hall experience. Twitter will use a combination of its own advanced search algorithms, human curators and Mass Relevance technology to determine the final questions for the event. As President Obama responds to live Tweets from across the country, screens positioned alongside the President will display the actual Tweet and avatar of the questioner. Screens will also provide up-to-the-second visualizations of the buzz that the Town Hall is generating across Twitter. These include a “U.S. heat map” of Twitter activity by geography and real-time representations of the topics that are trending on Twitter throughout the President’s conversation with the U.S.
“It is a tremendous honor to work with Twitter on this project,” said Sam Decker, CEO of Mass Relevance. The Mass Relevance Platform powers real-time social content for clients such as ABC, C-SPAN, MTV, NBC and others. “Whether it is entertainment, publishing or politics, real-time social content is a critical component to any viewer-driven experience. We are very excited to work with Twitter to bring the Twitterverse into the democratic process, and innovate new ways to bring together citizens and leaders.”
Announcing New TV and Digital Visualizations for Election Season
As conversations and coverage continue to heat up in preparation for the November 2012 presidential election, Mass Relevance is pleased to debut a suite of innovative Elections offerings that drive highly engaging experiences around political events, debates, broadcasts and breaking stories. The Elections offering allows networks and publishers to easily curate and integrate relevant streams of live social content and data into web, mobile and television experiences, as well as integrate exciting visualizations, like geo-mapped conversational heat maps, polls, Q&A’s, leader boards and trends at the local, regional and national levels, in order to grow audiences and amplify buzz about the stories and events that will define the next election.
Both the Election offerings and the virtual town hall initiatives are accomplished through Mass Relevance’s powerful mix of enterprise-class services and innovative technology. The Mass Relevance Platform uniquely combines a cutting-edge social technology that can instantly aggregate, curate and deliver the best content for any context with an enterprise SaaS infrastructure to meet the needs of the Fortune 500 – at a scale of tens of thousands of Tweets per second and less than a second to publish to a real-time experience. Mass Relevance has powered successful integrated Twitter strategies for media, entertainment and consumer brands such as Cisco, Dick Clark Productions, E! Online, ITV, MTV, NBC Sports, and Pepsi.
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.
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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12-year frog design Veteran to join Mass Relevance as Creative Director
Mass Relevance welcomes Eric Freedman as Creative Director to focus on product innovation and evolution
Austin, Texas — April 27, 2011 – Mass Relevance, a new leader in social curation, today announced that Eric Freedman will be joining their team as Creative Director. Eric, who comes to Mass Relevance after 12 years of leading creative teams at frog design, will focus on product innovation and evolution through user experience and interaction design. He will also lead the Mass Relevance design team as it provides social content visualizations and design solutions for clients. Eric will also shepherd the Mass Relevance brand and marking touch-points as it evolves and grows.
“Design is critically important to the value and growth of our company and Eric’s approach to interface design is holistic,” said Sam Decker, founder and CEO of Mass Relevance. “I worked with Eric for several years when I managed Dell.com. He has worked on every angle of brand, product and digital design for some of the largest brands at one of the most well-respected design agencies in the world. It is a tremendous honor to welcome someone of Eric’s caliber to the executive team. The entire team is excited to work with him and learn from him.”
Before joining Mass Relevance, Eric Freedman spent 12 years at frog design serving the last nine years as Creative Director. He focused on the creation of design solutions across a broad spectrum of platforms and touch-points while contributing to studio management and business development. At frog, Eric led large-scale web design efforts for top brands Dell, T-Mobile, and Microsoft. He has also done numerous Mobile UI/UX, embedded UI, and desktop software projects for companies including Alltel, Bell Canada, HP, and Motorola.
“Mass Relevance has built a phenomenal team of innovative leaders whose approach and strategy to real-time social curation and display is unmatched,” said Freedman. “Mass Relevance has quickly become the leader in enterprise social curation as it continues to work with some of the largest entertainment, media, and sports brands around. I am thrilled to join the team as Creative Director and look forward to exciting things ahead.”
About Mass Relevance
Based in Austin, Texas, Mass Relevance helps entertainment, media, retail, and manufacturing brands drive real-time engagement through social curation. 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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Katy Perry Debuts Tweet-to-Screen for California Dreams 2011 Tour
Now, for the first time ever in the music touring industry, fan tweets will appear on the big screen to greet concert goers and feed the pre-show frenzy of excitement and anticipation
Austin, Texas – April 18, 2011 – Social curation start-up Mass Relevance today announced that it is powering “Tweet-to-Screen” for global pop sensation Katy Perry’s California Dreams 2011 tour. Now, for the first time ever, concert goers will be welcomed to each show by giant on-stage screens that display live fan pictures and tweets from the event, giving everyone in the audience the chance to share their thoughts, excitement and anticipation before Katy appears on stage. Katy will get the tweets started by tweeting the hashtag for each show the day of the event. A mini-version of Tweet-to-Screen will also appear on Katy Perry’s tour website, http://www.katyperry.com/tour-diary, to allow any fan anywhere in the world to participate in the excitement.
“Katy wanted to make the California Dreams Tour as interactive as possible, for both the concert-going fans as well as the fans following online,” says Ngoc Hoang of Direct Management Group. “After meeting with Mass Relevance, we knew immediately they would be the perfect team to help us take the venue experience outside of the arena. It’s been exciting to see the thousands of Tweets pour in and watch each show become a Trending Topic within minutes of doors opening.”
Fan tweet on Katy Perry’s Tweet-to-Screen
“This is a really exciting partnership between Katy Perry, Twitter and Mass Relevance that showcases the future of real-time audience participation,” said Sam Decker, CEO of Mass Relevance. “This is the beginning of offline, online, fan and audience integration that creates a more engaging experience at the show. It also encourages fans to tweet and enables fans at home to see the excitement about the show, getting others even more excited about Katy and seeing her concert.”
How It Works:
Every upcoming Katy Perry show in the California Dreams 2011 Tour will have its own dedicated hashtag, which Katy will tweet the day of each show. Fans in the audience and around the world can include the hashtag in any of their Katy-specific tweets in order to have them appear on-screen at the event. Tweets will be aggregated and moderated by Mass Relevance to appear on two huge screens, dubbed Tweet-to-Screen, at each side of the stage. Tweets will appear on Tweet-To-Screen against a branded background that matches the tour site, and will highlight both the profile picture of the tweeter and their tweet. Each tweet runs through Mass Relevance’s technology and hand moderation in seconds to ensure that the content is as close to real-time as possible.
“Mass Relevance provides a flexible, robust platform to facilitate large-scale, real-time interactions in a relevant, moderated way,” Decker continued. “Through Mass Relevance, Katy can turn her wish to communicate, connect and share with fans into reality – and do something that is unique in the music business. This is a strong example of an innovative new approach that uses real-time social content to drive engagement and excitement. And on a personal note, I got my daughter excited about what our company does!”
Launched in December 2010, Mass Relevance has powered successful integrated Twitter strategies for the 2011 Golden Globes, the 2011 Oscars and ESPN.com’s March Madness Tournament of Tweets, among others.
About Mass Relevance
Based in Austin, Texas, Mass Relevance helps entertainment, media, retail, and manufacturing brands drive real-time engagement through social syndication. 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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Mass Relevance Welcomes Don Loeb and Paul Yanover to Advisory Board
Executives tap experience from Disney, Google and Yahoo! to provide strategic guidance as Mass Relevance continues to enable brands to leverage meaningful, relevant social content
Austin, Texas — April 15, 2011 – Mass Relevance, a new company that helps consumer brands effectively use real-time social content to drive engagement on television, web, and mobile, today welcomed Don Loeb and Paul Yanover as the newest additions to Mass Relevance Advisory Board. These veteran technology executives bring nearly 30 years of combined expertise and leadership in digital media, entertainment, and technology to Mass Relevance, including hands-on leadership experience at Disney Online, Google and Yahoo!. As Advisors, they will provide strategic insights and guidance to Mass Relevance as the company continues to develop its leading social curation platform for media, retail, entertainment and manufacturing sectors.
“It is an honor and privilege to welcome Don and Paul as Advisors,” said Sam Decker, co-founder and CEO of Mass Relevance. “They are seasoned and distinguished business leaders with extensive experience in the media, technology and entertainment industry, and they will bring valued insight as we continue to help brands use real-time social content to drive engagement and results. We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Paul and Don to the Mass Relevance Advisory Board.”
Don Loeb has over 12 years experience in social media focusing on content syndication, social distribution, and publishing. He has held a variety of senior business development and product management positions across a number of early-stage companies and large Internet entities. Currently, Loeb is the Head of Business Development at Typekit, a leading subscription-based service for web designers and developers. Before joining Typekit, Loeb spent over three years at Google serving as Strategic Partner Development Manager and Business Product Manager. He also was Director of Business Development at Yahoo!, where he helped drive content syndication and social media efforts. Loeb has also held senior level business development positions at FeedBurner and iSyndicate as well.
“The consumer relationship with social media is growing at an accelerating rate and the need for engaging, relevant social content has never been greater on the web,” said Loeb. “Mass Relevance intimately understands how to derive relevance and I am confident that their cutting-edge technology and approach to brand engagement through social media will succeed on all levels. I am excited about the opportunity to serve as an advisor and look forward to working with the company as they continue to grow.”
Paul Yanover most recently served as Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Disney Online. Paul oversaw all Disney-branded strategic, creative, technical, and marketing initiatives on the Internet and mobile web. He played a key role in developing Disney.com into a #1-ranked community-family and parenting website. Before his role at Disney Online, Yanover held other senior positions inside Disney. He was Senior Vice President in charge of Disney’s Parks & Resorts Online where he oversaw the online travel business across all of Disney’s properties worldwide. Yanover was also the founding executive of Buena Vista Game Entertainment Studio, a new startup within Disney focusing on online and mobile games. Outside of Disney, Yanover was co-founder and CEO of Ceiva Logic. During his tenure at Cieva Logic, the company raised over $24M in capital and achieved over $10M in sales.
“Customer engagement is key to driving loyalty and results for any brand,” said Yanover. “Mass Relevance has created a perfect avenue for brands to achieve audience engagement and participation through its products and services. Mass Relevance’s work is highly valuable and, I believe, a tremendous benefit for brands. I am delighted to be able to provide my insight and guidance in working with this promising company.”
The Mass Relevance Advisory Board assembles a phenomenal group of thought-leaders and visionaries who are defining the next era of media and content. In addition to Loeb and Yanover, these include: Ze Frank, one of the world’s foremost experts in the intersection of technology and creativity in web design, marketing, and new forms of media; Jonah Bloom, former Editor of Advertising Age and former CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Breaking Media; Brad Berens, Ph.D., Chief Content Officer for ad:tech, the iMedia Summits and the CMO Executive Summits and also Senior Research Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future; and Mike Edelhart, a long-standing media and Internet start-up investor and executive.
About Mass Relevance
Based in Austin, Texas, Mass Relevance helps entertainment, media, retail, and manufacturing brands drive real-time engagement through social syndication. 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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Social Marketing Innovator Sam Decker Launches New Company to Help Brands Achieve Real-Time Engagement
Mass Relevance Secures Nearly $2 Million in Series A Funding from FLOODGATE and Austin Ventures
Austin, Texas — December 21, 2010 – Social marketing innovator Sam Decker today unveiled Mass Relevance, a new company that helps consumer brands effectively use real-time social content to drive engagement on television, web, and mobile. Founded by Decker, a former Dell executive and founding CMO of Bazaarvoice, and joined by co-founders Brian Dainton and Eric Falcao, Mass Relevance is aimed at content and marketing executives who want to activate engaging experiences via real-time conversations, commentary and insights culled from millions of social activities taking place every moment around the globe. The company uniquely combines a cutting-edge social syndication technology that can instantly aggregate, curate and deliver the best content for any context with an enterprise SaaS infrastructure to meet the needs of the needs of the Fortune 500.
Decker, who will lead Mass Relevance as President and CEO, is known across the industry as a marketing innovator who pioneered social commerce as a category and delivered measurable results for 1,000 leading brands like Best Buy, Macy’s and Dell.
“The number one thing that I learned at Bazaarvoice is that people pay attention to content from others, and they will tune in to brands that facilitate this content as part of the experiences they create. However, given the overwhelming number of conversations coming in from all directions all at once, it’s often impossible to focus a lens on the ones that are most relevant for a given time, place, audience, and outcome. There is a tremendous opportunity to bring the most relevant content from the masses, to the masses – in real-time, wherever they spend their time.”
Mass Relevance also announced that it has secured nearly $2 million from FLOODGATE and Austin Ventures in a Series A round, and FLOODGATE’s Mike Maples, Jr. will take a seat on the Board of Directors. Mass Relevance has attracted tremendous interest from the venture community and the highly competitive round remains open for a few more strategic angel investors in the media and entertainment industry.
“Sam is a phenomenal executive who combines vision, leadership, and big results,” said Maples. “He built Dell.com into the largest consumer eCommerce site at $3.5 billion in annual sales, and helped drive Bazaarvoice from a tiny start-up to an established category leader. Now, with Mass Relevance, he has an opportunity to define and lead another new market as one of a select group of companies that bring social experiences to the enterprise. Curation is a concept whose time has come, and this team has the technology and vision to lead in this space and drive real business results.”
Mass Relevance Market Opportunity
An explosion of social experiences has hit the mainstream. Consumers are increasingly connected to people, brands and content through Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and others – and contributing more and more content through mobile devices. Twitter hosts 30 million tweets about TV shows each day, and Facebook is expected to double in size from 500 million to 1 billion profiles in the next two years.
As social continues to grow exponentially, so does the challenge for brands, media and retailers. Consumers are demanding that a growing percentage of their experience be geared towards content from their peers. However, interactions are becoming more fragmented, multiplying the complexity of engaging audiences. New opportunities to engage consumers exist – but success requires matching the right “useful” social content to the right audience in real-time.
In this world where social is valued above all else, a platform to find, curate and display relevant social content is a tremendous competitive advantage for brands, media and retailers who want to attract an audience. Mass Relevance is uniquely positioned to help brands drive real-time engagement through social syndication that delivers the most relevant social content for a given context that includes time, place, audience and desired outcome. The company is the first to provide a complete stack of SaaS social aggregation, curation and syndication technology and services that allow brands to engage audiences with real-time content. These experiences deliver tangible engagement metrics like audience viewership, time on site, page views, ad views, conversions and sales.
Mass Relevance Leadership
Decker brings more than 17 years of leadership in digital marketing, social commerce, and start-up growth to his role as CEO of Mass Relevance, including the ability to precisely identify the emerging needs of businesses and innovate measurable, high-impact solutions to new challenges. As founding CMO of Bazaarvoice, Decker helped build the core platform of Bazaarvoice’s products and helped drive the company’s growth to category leader serving 1,000 brands. Before joining Bazaarvoice, he spent 7 years of leadership at Dell in the marketing, eBusiness and customer-centricity. At Mass Relevance, he will work hand in hand with co-founders and premier Ruby developers Brian Dainton and Eric Falcao, who will serve as Director of Products and Director of Platform.
In addition, Decker has tapped the expertise of the thought leaders and visionaries who are defining the next era of media and content to serve on the Mass Relevance Advisory Board. These include: Jonah Bloom, former Editor of Ad Age and current CEO and Editor in Chief of Breaking Media; Brad Berens, Chief Content Officer for ad:tech, the iMedia Summits and the CMO Network and Senior Research Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future; and Mike Edelhart, a long-standing media and Internet start-up investor and executive.
“Social Curation is an incredibly complex task, and the companies who nail it are the ones who end up making history,” said Ze Frank. “There will be a winner in this space, and I am excited to work with Sam to make sure it’s Mass Relevance.”
About Mass Relevance
Based in Austin, Texas, Mass Relevance helps entertainment, media, retail, and manufacturing brands drive real-time engagement through social syndication. 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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