A maker for technology for app developers generating user engagement and more downloads, Socialize has recently been acquired by ShareThis, securing $23 ...www.fashinvest.com/socialize-acquired-sharethis-series-funding/

Socialize Gets Acquired by ShareThis in Series C Funding

ShareThis has acquired Socialize, a maker of technology for app developers, and also announced that it has raised $23 million in Series C financing. The new round is led by T-Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom, and includes ...See all stories on this topic »

ShareThis Buys Socialize, Inks $23M Series C

Acquisition Creates a Powerful New Standard for the Age of Mobile, Cross-Device Sharing
PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire - March 20, 2013) -  ShareThis today announced that it has acquired Socialize and secured $23M in Series C financing. Socialize provides app developers with a drop-in social solution that generates greater user engagement and more downloads by making apps more social. With this acquisition, ShareThis creates a unified platform across desktop, mobile web browser and in-app environments, extending its massive reach of 200 million US internet users to the mobile app ecosystem. "We've seen mobile sharing traffic double over the past year so there's a massive opportunity to combine our deep knowledge of social audiences and the most engaging content to create truly compelling mobile ad executions," said Kurt Abrahamson, CEO of ShareThis. "The acquisition of Socialize and our new round of funding will accelerate our efforts to deliver an enhanced digital advertising solution for brands, content optimization offerings for publishers and of course, the choice and flexibility consumers want in sharing content that moves them. "
ShareThis' new round of funding is led by T-Venture, the venture capital company of Deutsche Telekom, and includes new investors Harbourton and corporate funds represented by West Capital Advisors. Existing investors Blue Chip Venture Company, DFJ, Illinois Ventures, Matthew Pritzker Company, Mercury Fund and RPM Ventures participated. Bernhard Gold of T-Venture will join the company's Board of Directors. The company plans to use the new funding for product development and market expansion. With this Series C round, ShareThis' total funding is $54 million. "Any time you have a chance to work closely with a team that has an unparalleled understanding of consumer behavior across all social channels and devices, it's going to be an exciting opportunity," said Bernhard Gold, Investment Director, T-Venture. "ShareThis is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the exploding cross-platform advertising opportunity and T-Venture is delighted to lead this round of funding to further support and leverage the growth of the company. "
Turning the Spotlight on Mobile Sharing
Socialize's social solutions have been integrated into hundreds of iOS and Android apps, which have been installed on more than 67 million devices. This acquisition will extend ShareThis' proprietary measure of the social quality of online content (SQI) to include in-app mobile social actions. As a result, publishers will be able to use ShareThis to get specific sharing analytics on desktop and mobile in a single dashboard with an industry-trusted measure. Both publishers and app developers will benefit from enhanced ways to optimize and monetize their apps. "Mobile app users typically have no idea who the other users of the same app are. It's like everyone's in the same room... with the lights off. We 'turn the lights on' by allowing users of the same app to socialize with each other and have vibrant conversations and engagement between users around shared interests," says Daniel Odio, CEO of Socialize. "Together with ShareThis, we'll enable app users to easily extend activity out to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ -- any social channel of their choice -- in addition to socializing in-app regardless of friend status. "
Delivering Unified and Creative Solutions for Advertisers
With Socialize, ShareThis will be able to capitalize on the growing U.S. mobile advertising market, which is forecast to reach $4 billion in 2013. With its extended reach, the company will gain better insights into how users engage and influence others resulting in more effective advertising wherever and on whatever device it's delivered. By combining unified audience insights along with creative executions that leverage the mobile form factor, ShareThis will reach new verticals and cement its leadership in the sharing and mobile economies. About ShareThis
ShareThis powers the social web, touching the lives of 95% of U.S. Internet users across more than 2 million publisher sites and 120+ social media channels. It makes content more engaging for publishers and marketing more effective for brands by tapping into the purest expression of interest-based social activity. ShareThis is the company for those wanting to make the world more connected, trusted and valuable through sharing. Based in Palo Alto, CA, the company is privately held. To learn more visit http://www.sharethis.com
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ShareThis Acquires Socialize and Announces New Funding Round of $23M Led by T-Venture

Lizette Chapman,
(c) 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
(c) 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
T-Venture has led a $23 million investment in Web analytics company ShareThis Inc., to help bankroll its acquisition of mobile social platform Socialize Inc., expand internationally and push the six-year-old company toward a more aggressive mobile strategy. The Series C infusion, which the venture capital company of Deutsche Telekom did at a valuation around $150 million, comes as competing startups including Parse.ly Inc., ChartBeat Inc . and longtime players like Google Analytics also expand their users and products. ShareThis has found success on the desktop, enabling some two million other publishers--a list which includes C-Span , Vogue, The Daily Beast, and The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD blog--to embed a "share" button on Web pages enabling readers to share content across multiple sites, including LinkedIn, Facebook , Twitter , Reddit, Pinterest , Digg, Google + and Tumblr with just one click. ShareThis provides publishers with analytics on those sharing actions and then sells that data to advertisers, a business it grew 155% to $30 million in 2012 revenue, according to the company. Advertising customers include Microsoft Corp , Best Buy Inc , American Express and Disney , as well as traditional networks, also according to the company. Although the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has a mobile product, ShareThis Chief Executive Kurt Abrahamson said Socialize had a more elegant solution. The six-person, San Francisco-based startup allows mobile app developers to use their software development kits to drop a few lines of code into their mobile apps to enable sharing and encourage more downloads via SMS, direct app store links and QR codes. It's already been installed on some 67 million devices, according to ShareThis. Mr. Abrahamson indicated Socialize would be the first of several acquisitions. "The majority of revenue and use is still on the desktop. We don't see the desktop going away at all," he said, noting he is planning for the shift to mobile content gradually over the next five to seven years. Plans call for hiring an unspecified number of salespeople and engineers during the next year and further expanding the combined company's current headcount of 100. Mr. Abrahamson declined to share the purchase price of Socialize, which had previously raised $1.8 million from Turner Broadcasting's Media Camp, Fenox Venture Capital and TMT Investments . Along with financing the acquisition, the new funding will help ShareThis expand internationally. Striking deals with content providers and advertisers in Europe, as well as advancing its mobile mission, are top ways T-Venture intends to help the firm, according to T-Venture Investment Director Bernhard Gold. Mr. Gold said although his firm invests "for purely financial reasons, it's very nice when you can make something happen on the strategic side. "
He indicated that a relationship between ShareThis and Deutsche Telekom 's portal network T-online.de may be in the works. Mr. Gold said when he first met with the ShareThis team last summer he was interested, but a little skeptical about the future growth numbers they showed him. As they continued conversations through the end of 2012 and decided T-Venture should lead the round, valuation was decided quickly. "It was a combination of the last round, their financial performance and the fact they really reached the numbers they set out," said Mr. Gold. "They nailed the plan. They planned huge growth and they reached it. I very much liked that reliability. "
The Series C round pumps total outside investment in ShareThis to $54 million and included new investor Harbourton. Fifth Third Capital, which was represented by West Capital Advisors, also participated as a new investor. Existing investors Blue Chip Venture Company , DFJ, Illinois Ventures, Matthew Pritzker Company, Mercury Fund and RPM Ventures participated. Existing investor Queen City Angels did not participate, according to the company. Mr. Gold will join the company's board of directors.


T-Venture Leads $23M Round for ShareThis to Expand, Acquire Socialize

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Palo Alto-based publisher platform ShareThis , the maker of those “social sharing” buttons scattered across the web, is today announcing having closed on $23 million in Series C financing, in a round led by T-Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom. Additionally, in another move signaling its intention to unify its platform across web and mobile, ShareThis has also acquired Socialize , a startup whose developer toolkit helps make any app social . The new round of funding included new investors Harbourton and corporate funds represented by West Capital investors, as well as participation from existing investors, Blue Chip Venture Company, DFJ, Illinois Ventures, Matthew Pritzker Company, Mercury Fund and RPM Ventures. As a part of the new round, Bernhard Gold of T-Venture will join ShareThis’s board. ShareThis’s total raise to date is $54 million. Today, ShareThis offers publishers sharing widgets, developer tools, and an analytics dashboard detailing social sharing trends across sites, and more, as well as tools for advertisers  that allow them to run targeted campaigns across the ShareThis network. But while its platform does offer some mobile sharing tools, ShareThis CEO Kurt Abrahamson says that their focus was primarily on mobile web, not apps. “We have a fairly large distribution of tools, so Socialize was partially about distribution in the app space, but it was primarily about finding a really strong team that had mobile a little bit more in its DNA,” he explains. “They’re a great team; they’re based in San Francisco – culturally, everything was 100 percent.”
Abrahamson says that although ShareThis had an app solution, it hadn’t pushed it, and now following this acquisition, Socialize’s app solution will become the new default. Socialize, for those unfamiliar, spun out of the startup’s earlier efforts with a service called  AppMakr  (also now owned by ShareThis), which helped individuals and businesses build their own native iPhone applications. As Socialize, the company put out a “Social SDK” (software development kit), which allows app developers to quickly add social features to their mobile applications such as likes, comments, shares, an “activity pane” showing other users’ in-app activity, and more. The idea is that it can add a social layer to any app, adding not only the ability for users to connect with each other, but a way for the brand to connect with their in-app user base, as well. As of last spring , the company had 150 live apps on its platform, with another 500 or so in testing, and was reaching around 10 million end users. Today, Socialize has grown to 800 apps across 67 million unique devices, and had just this month scored its first enterprise contract with Warner Bros., which will now be integrating Socialize into its various mobile apps, starting with its “Ellen” app (the daytime talkshow). The Socialize platform will remain up-and-running following the ShareThis acquisition, though it might eventually be rebranded. All six members of the current Socialize team will operate out of ShareThis’s San Francisco office. Former Socialize CEO, now SVP of Strategic Partnerships at ShareThis, Daniel Odio, says that the service won’t be changed for current users – in fact, he adds, it will now be actively improved as a part of ShareThis. Abrahamson also says that Socialize will help give ShareThis a better position in mobile. “The biggest challenge is that there’s not consistent metrics across web and mobile. One of the things we’re going to focus on is figuring out a solution that will allow publishers to see the sharing of their content across multiple platforms, and not just toggling between one and another,” he says. “In the world we’re evolving to, publishers need to optimize content for all devices, and I think they’ll see different social sharing patterns, depending on the platform.”
He adds that, today, many web publishers are seeing higher percentages of users coming from mobile than they may have expected. So with the acquisition, ShareThis wants to be able to analyze that traffic and present it back to publishers, letting them see the value on mobile. The integration of Socialize into ShareThis’s platform will take around two quarters to complete, with the initial effort focused on developing a version of ShareThis’s SQI measurement (Social Quality Index) for mobile, a proprietary ranking metric that allows publishers to compare themselves to competitors in their same space. Also reflective of its increased focus on mobile is the new T-Venture investment, which brings a mobile perspective to ShareThis. But more importantly, perhaps, it brings an international angle. Although there are many publishers outside the U.S. using ShareThis, the company hasn’t really focused on the global market. That will now change, as ShareThis plans to expand internationally in 2013, including establishing European offices, possibly in Germany or the U.K., expanding its head count along the way by two to three dozen. ShareThis currently has a publisher base of 2.3 million. The company says its tools are seen by 95 percent of the U.S. Internet audience each month – over 200 million uniques. In 2012, it grew revenues 155 percent, and grew its staff from 50 to 95. On the advertising side, it works with a large number of major brands, including Microsoft, Samsung, Best Buy, Disney, American Express and others. 0

ShareThis Aims For Mobile, With $23M Series C Led By T-Venture, Acquisition Of Social App Platform, Socialize

AppMakr

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Future

XM Satellite Radio Holdings

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Seed

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Socialize provides app developers with a drop-in social solution that generates greater user engagement and more downloads by making apps more social.In March 2013, Socialize was acquired by ShareThis. The valuation of Socialize was undisclosed. Other terms of the deal were not released.

Name	Work History	Title	Status
Isaac Mosquera	ShareThis, AppMakr, PointAbout, FamilyOven.com, Future, and XM Satellite Radio Holdings	Founder	Current
DROdio - Daniel R. Odio	ShareThis, AppMakr, and General Electric	Founder, Chief Executive Officer	Former

Name	Isaac Mosquera	DROdio - Daniel R. Odio
Work History	ShareThis, AppMakr, PointAbout, FamilyOven.com, Future, and XM Satellite Radio Holdings	ShareThis, AppMakr, and General Electric
Title	Founder	Founder, Chief Executive Officer
Status	Current	Former

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