Extole, a startup offering tools for brands to manage their “social advocacy” programs, has raised $7.5 million in new funding.

The round is a follow-on to the $10 million Series C that Extole raised about a year ago, and it comes from existing investors, including Shasta Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and Trident Capital. The company has now raised a total of $29.9 million.

Extole allows businesses to find the best advocates in their customer base and offer them rewards to promote the company to their friends on social networks — in other words, it gives companies a way to build word-of-mouth. I asked a spokesperson how Extole compares to the competition, specifically Zuberance, and they responded:

Zuberance uses the concept of the Net Promoter Score to identify brand advocates to get them to post reviews on social sites.

Extole helps brand identify customer advocates across all owned assets: website, ecommerce site, social channels and email and offers incentivized programs to get them to spread Word of Mouth recommendations directly with their friends. We get a significantly larger % of customers spreading the word and driving traffic and conversions.

Back in June, Extole launched a new version of its platform that added “social expressions” from Facebook’s Open Graph — so for example, thanks to Extole, visitors to TastingRoom.com can post updates on Facebook about different types of wine for sale, saying they “want it,” “tried it,” or “recommend” it. The company also plans to launch a new product in the first half of 2013.

Extole says that its new customers include eHarmony, Spotify, Cache, Seventh Generation and HSN Improvements.

“Social media marketing is going through a fundamental transition,” said Jim Barnett, a partner at Shasta and chairman of Extole’s board of directors, in the press release. “Marketers are shifting their focus from simply measuring social activity to driving measurable marketing ROI. The power of word of mouth is critical to this shift, and we believe that Extole’s approach to social advocacy uniquely positions the company to drive the next wave of innovation in social marketing.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook hasn’t given up on Collections — the test feature that looked similar to Pinterest and allowed users to “want” or “collect” products that pages posted — but it temporarily removed all posts and activity related to it.

TechCrunch noticed that Collections were no longer visible on pages or users’ Timelines and confirmed with Facebook that the initial test period for the product is over, but the feature hasn’t been killed. The social network is looking to improve the product and create a mobile component, so it decided to shut down the existing version in the meantime.

“Product development on Collections has not stopped,” Facebook told TechCrunch. “Instead we have completed our initial test of Collections and are now analyzing the data to inform product development. For many of the product tests we do, we periodically pause the test to assess how to best progress with the product’s rollout.”

With Collections, Facebook worked with Michael Kors, Pottery Barn, Wayfair, Victoria’s Secret, Neiman Marcus, Smith Optics and Fab.com to test several variations of the feature. Collections posts featured large images that users could hover over and take an action. For some users that action was “Want,” though others saw “Collect” or “Like.” Clicking one of these buttons would save items to a section of users’ Timelines, either called “Products” or “Wishlist” depending which cohort users were in. Facebook also tested whether these lists should be visible to friends only or friends of friends.

When users browsed a collection, there were links directing users to buy the items from the retailer’s website. Collection posts also include native Facebook features such as Like, share, and comment. The social network is likely looking at all of these signals to understand engagement and purchase behavior.

This year Facebook has begun taking a vertical-by-vertical approach to developing products for marketers. Collections is an example of something seemingly developed with retailers and e-commerce sites specifically in mind.

While Collections is still being developed, retailers can work with third parties to offer similar functionality with Open Graph and News Feed apps. ShopIgniter, for instance, gives companies the option to create customizable interactive posts, including product collections, video showcases and limited-time storefronts with exclusive offers. See an example below.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Enterprise software company TIBCO is debuting a new version of its Yammer-clone Tibbr today. The newest version of the company’s social communications app includes geo-location capabilities called Tibbr GEO, which integrates the ‘check-in’ model in the enterprise.

By incorporating location into Tibbr, the service wants to physical places into data hubs that can immediately stream important insights relevant to that specific place. Tibbr GEO gives companies the ability to tag important places, whether in the enterprise or as part of the extended enterprise. As Tibbr users approach these places, they’re automatically presented relevant in-stream information.

For example, Tibbr says the geolocation feature could turn a gate into a contextual relevant data hub to give agents, pilots and flight attendants insights as they approach the gate. Or the section of every retail aisle could include data on individual shelf space, insights about individual products, how they’re selling, how fast they’re moving or how a new location might be affecting sales.

Tibbr Mobile applications now use HTML5 to deliver users a consistent mobile experience across all platforms and has also been updated to support offline access.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

TechCrunch has learned that Citrix Systems is buying Cloud.com for between $200 million and $250 million. The deal should be announced within the hour. Cloud.com gives companies their own private EC2-like infrastructure. The team has built the company in just a few years, boasting massive clients with demanding infrastructure needs like Zynga, Tata, and other huge undisclosed tech names. Cloud.com was funded by Redpoint Ventures, Nexus Capital and Index Ventures.

Of course the big question is with things going so well, why would Cloud sell? In a Valley where companies are either huge and take forever to build or wind up being a quick flip worth less than $100 million, deals this size have become rare. And closing one just two years after its first venture round having raised just $20 million in funding is even rarer. Perhaps the offer was just too life changing for the entrepreneurs to pass up. Who are we to judge that?

This is another exit for Redpoint Ventures who was the first money in and is having quite a year. Clearwell was bought by Symantec for $390 million. Qihoo went public and is now boasting a $2.5 billion market capitalization. Home Away went public too; it’s now worth $3.3 billion, and Redpoint owns 26% of it. Responsys also went public and is valued at $760 million. Redpoint was the first money in Cloud.com, so although the purchase price isn’t as big, it’s still a nice multiple.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Fresh off a $48 million funding round, cloud storage and collaboration startup Box.net is launching a new product today that should further its presence in the enterprise space. The company is debuting ECM Cloud Connect, which acts as a bridge between on-premise enterprise content management systems and Box.net’s cloud platforms.

Box.net CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie tells us that while there are traditional software and systems to manage on-premise data within organizations, Box wants to help introduce cloud version of of this with ECM Cloud Connect. Here’s how it works. Box is partnering with EntropySoft to offer businesses a peice of software will sit behind firewall and will connect to both on-premise solutions and Box, acting as a bridge between the two platforms.

Once connected, ECM Cloud Connect will automatically synchronize data between any enterprise content management system (like SharePoint) and Box. Businesses can then migrate specific content to the cloud, and seamlessly archive it back to any internal infrastructure, all while keeping the same folder structure, permissions, and version history
(metadata support will be coming soon, says Box).

ECM Cloud Connect will also allows users to archive content automatically or on-demand from Box and will also allows users to easily migrate content to and from on-premise systems to Box’s cloud.

Users of the new offering also can access Box from any location, on any device, including desktop, laptop, smartphone, and tablet. Box also allows users to invite users to a shared workspace in the cloud with a secure web link and users can view and play content directly in the browser, including images, audio, video, and programming files.

So why would an company want to use ECM Cloud Connect? Levie says that for companies that have not yet migrated fully to the cloud, this offering gives them the best of both world in terms of having an on-premise system and the choice of migrating specific content to the cloud. This gives companies who may have been hesitant about transitioning fully to the cloud, a hybrid solution.

Of course, Microsoft Sharepoint has both an on-premise offering as well as a cloud-based platform, which achieves some of what ECM Cloud Connect aims to do. But Levie maintains that Microsoft’s offerings are clunky and Box’s ease of use and simplicity makes the platform more ideal for enterprise customers who want a hybrid infrastructure.

Currently, Box has 60,000 companies using its cloud platform, including 73 percent of the Fortune 500. EMC Cloud Connect could bring in a number of new enterprise customers who are on the fence about moving data to the cloud.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch