Mediaboss Marketing

MADISON, WI--(Marketwire -06/07/12)- Shoutlet, the leading cloud-based self-serve social marketing platform, today announced it has raised $15 million in Series C funding from FTV Capital, a growth equity investor focused on high growth businesses with innovative solutions. This round brings Shoutlet's total funding to $24.2 million in outside investment.

Shoutlet is the most sophisticated and comprehensive self-serve platform available to create, publish, and measure social marketing campaigns and activities on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Its enterprise-level functionality, Social CRM intelligence gathering and segmentation capabilities, trigger-based campaign publishing, world-class design tools for Facebook pages and web apps, and ROI-focused analytics differentiate Shoutlet from all other social management tools.

With the financing, Shoutlet will accelerate product innovation, grow its strategic partner network, and increase staff across all departments, including expanding account management and technical support offices in San Francisco, New York, and London.

In recent months, Shoutlet has added global brands including Canon, Nokia, Wrangler, K-Swiss, NASCAR, Fairmont Hotels, and Sandals Resorts to its roster of more than 400 customers who manage 6000+ accounts in 50 countries. Year over year revenue growth now exceeds 200%.

"The way brands and agencies manage social marketing is changing rapidly. For the first time, marketers can easily utilize a self-serve platform with power and flexibility not easily accessible via service-based tool vendors. The wave of customers making the change to in-house management has exceeded our wildest expectations and has validated our do-it-yourself model," said Shoutlet CEO Jason Weaver. "This funding will enable Shoutlet to innovate at an even faster pace and aggressively expand our product offering to meet the needs of sophisticated marketers who desire a more rapid response form of social media management."

"FTV has been an active investor in the digital marketing space, and we found Shoutlet to be far and away the strongest platform for sophisticated marketers to run their own campaigns. Shoutlet's self-serve model, product innovation, and high customer satisfaction and retention rates combine to uniquely position the company as a leader in the SMMS category," said Liron Gitig, FTV Capital principal and new Shoutlet board member. "To FTV's strategic investor network including many global financial institutions, Shoutlet's permission-based, governance approach to enterprise management is extremely attractive. We're confident the strength of the Shoutlet leadership team, vision, and long term product roadmap will ensure tremendous and sustainable growth."

About ShoutletShoutlet is a leading cloud-based enterprise social marketing platform that enables marketers to publish, engage, and measure social marketing campaigns and activities on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Its industry leading functionality includes a Social CRM for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube management; Social Canvas for Facebook tabs, HTML5 pages, and custom contest and web app design; Social Switchboard for trigger-based campaign publishing; Social Profiles for data acquisition and interest segmentation; Social Enterprise for corporate-level control of multiple brands, franchises, and agents; and Social Analytics for metric tracking and custom reporting. For more information, please visit http://www.shoutlet.com.

About FTV CapitalFTV Capital is a growth equity firm with over $1 billion under management that invests in high-growth companies offering a range of innovative solutions in four sectors: business services, financial services, payments/transaction processing and technology. FTV's experienced team leverages its domain expertise and proven track record in each of these sectors to help motivated management teams accelerate growth. FTV also provides companies with access to its Global Partner Network, a group of the world's leading enterprises and executives who have helped FTV portfolio companies for more than a decade. Founded in 1998, FTV Capital has invested in 75 portfolio companies across three funds, and has offices in San Francisco and New York. For more information, please visit http://www.ftvcapital.com.

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Shoutlet Raises $15 Million Series C Funding From FTV Capital to Fuel Further Product Innovation

MicroStrategy(R) Incorporated , a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced that its Social Media Marketing iCommerce Summit (SMICS) will be held July 10-11 at the Amsterdam RAI International Convention Center and will run adjacent to MicroStrategy World 2012 Amsterdam.

SMICS attendees will have an exclusive opportunity to learn about innovative technologies from MicroStrategy in Social Intelligence and hear the views and experiences of industry luminaries at the cutting-edge of social media monetization. Digital strategists will share their perspectives on the future of social media and commerce, with a focus on how companies can best compete for consumer attention and relevance. Featured guest speakers include:

-- Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy Chairman and CEO, and author of the

forthcoming "The Mobile Wave." Saylor will discuss how the current

generation of mobile smartphones and tablet computers has set the stage

to become the universal computing platform for the world, and how

products, businesses, industries, economies, and society may be altered

forever as the mobile wave washes over us and changes the digital

landscape.

-- Brian Solis, world-renowned digital thought-leader and author of "The

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The Future of Social Commerce at Social Media Marketing iCommerce Summit

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. and NEW YORK, June 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Indicating the continued strength of content-driven brand marketing, Project: WorldWide today announced the acquisition of Affinitive, a word-of-mouth and social media agency and Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) that handles consumer assignments for brands such as Random House, E.&J. Gallo Winery, Major League Soccer and Ubisoft. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in New York City, Affinitive provides social business solutions combining innovative consumer engagement strategies with proprietary technology, real-time monitoring and integration with clients' existing enterprise systems to create a seamless platform for creating and executing integrated brand programs.

Over the course of a decade and more than 200 campaigns, Affinitive has created and managed online brand communities, customer insight/advisory panels, loyalty/rewards programs, social and mobile applications, digital promotions and much more. As a founding member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, the group is recognized as an industry pioneer and a leader within the industry's ongoing efforts to evolve social media marketing practices and standards.

"Affinitive is a natural fit for Project in that we share the same belief about how brands must adapt to spark two-way dialogue and actively participate in customer-driven conversations," said Robert G. Vallee Jr., Chairman & CEO of Project: WorldWide. "Brands today seek to engage through more meaningful stories and experiences, and Affinitive will help advance our mission to do just that."

"Project is built on a foundation of engagement, and they understand that social media is the fabric that ties everything together - from online and offline consumer behavior and experiences to the marketing, loyalty, CRM and research functions of any organization," said Bob Troia, Affinitive's founder and CEO. "Affinitive shares that vision, and by joining the Project: WorldWide family, we can now provide fully integrated, best-of-breed social business solutions for our customers on a global scale."

Affinitive's creative, technology and strategy teams put brand personality and a customer-centric approach to work on client campaigns, rather than focus on technology for its own sake. This philosophy has allowed Affinitive the freedom and flexibility to create ideas that work across multiple channels even as new social media platforms rise to shake the status quo on a seemingly regular basis.

"The rapid pace of innovation in the social media marketing sphere sometimes distracts clients from the real revolution happening in terms of what online and mobile mediums make possible for really powerful consumer engagement," said Warren Ackerman, EVP of Affinitive. "It's been a wonderful journey helping clients see the real opportunity, and now with a platform like Project behind us, it's exciting to imagine what we can do for clients who share our same vision."

In joining Project: WorldWide, Affinitive is teaming up with a diverse roster of highly collaborative, award-winning agencies including experience marketing agency George P. Johnson, G7 Entertainment Marketing, interactive marketing shop JUXT Interactive, multimedia production content company Spinifex, creative ideas agency Partners + Napier and 3D marketing production shop Raumtechnik.

About Project: WorldWide (project.com)

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Project: WorldWide Acquires Social Marketing Firm Affinitive

TYSONS CORNER, Va., June 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --MicroStrategy Incorporated (MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced that its Social Media Marketing iCommerce Summit (SMICS) will be held July 10-11 at the Amsterdam RAI International Convention Center and will run adjacent to MicroStrategy World 2012 Amsterdam.

SMICS attendees will have an exclusive opportunity to learn about innovative technologies from MicroStrategy in Social Intelligence and hear the views and experiences of industry luminaries at the cutting-edge of social media monetization. Digital strategists will share their perspectives on the future of social media and commerce, with a focus on how companies can best compete for consumer attention and relevance. Featured guest speakers include:

"MicroStrategy is excited to be hosting SMICS, the second annual summit of its kind where companies can immerse themselves in the lucrative opportunities and meaningful connections that social media networks present," said Karl-Heinz Land, Chief Evangelist and SVP Social iCommerce at MicroStrategy. "SMICS will educate companies on the value of social CRM and social commerce, present cutting-edge strategies for connecting brands to their consumers via social media, and explore how companies can set their sights on social media, social commerce and the future of television and social TV."

For more details on this event, visit http://smics2012.com, download the SMICS brochure, or follow SMICS on Twitter.

About MicroStrategy

Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a leading provider of enterprise software platforms for business intelligence (BI), mobile intelligence, and social intelligence applications. MicroStrategy's BI platform enables leading organizations worldwide to analyze the vast amounts of data stored across their enterprises to make better business decisions. Companies choose MicroStrategy BI for its ease-of-use, sophisticated analytics, and superior data and user scalability. MicroStrategy's mobile intelligence platform helps companies and organizations build, deploy, and maintain mobile apps across a range of solutions by embedding intelligence, transactions, and multimedia into apps. MicroStrategy's social intelligence platform includes a number of applications that help enterprises harness the power of social networks for marketing and e-commerce, as well as a suite of free consumer friendly apps that use MicroStrategy's enterprise technologies. The MicroStrategy Cloud offering combines MicroStrategy and third-party software, hardware, and services to enable rapid, cost-effective development of hosted BI, mobile, and social applications. To learn more about MicroStrategy (MSTR), visit http://www.microstrategy.com and follow us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/microstrategy) and Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/microstrategy).

MicroStrategy, MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform, MicroStrategy Cloud, MicroStrategy Mobile, Cloud Personal, MicroStrategy Transaction Services, Wisdom, MicroStrategy Wisdom and Emma are either trademarks or registered trademarks of MicroStrategy Incorporated in the United States and certain other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

MSTR-G

Contact:Warren Getler MicroStrategy Incorporated 703-744-6258 wgetler@microstrategy.com

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The Future of Social Commerce Sets the Agenda at MicroStrategy's 2nd Annual Social Media Marketing iCommerce Summit ...

In the past three years, the average budget spent on social media marketing has grown 133%. In an effort to transform social media from a promotion and engagement tool to one more focused on lead generation and closing, HubSpot and HootSuite have joined forces to close the loop on social media marketing efforts.

The partnership is focused on a central idea that, they should make it easier for marketers to generate, nurture, and manage leads via social media, so they can finally close the loop on their social media marketing efforts (what theyre calling closed-loop social for short).

At the heart of the partnership is an app which allows integration into the HootSuite app directory. It automatically puts HubSpot lead and keyword data into HootSuite. The beta app allows users to monitor their leads tweets in HootSuite to identify opportunities to follow up on their leads with a tweet back. Using the app to monitor their best-performing keywords in HubSpot, users can identify leads through relevant conversations.

It may sound complex in theory, but through what could be the worlds largest webinar, and a series of ebooks to go along with their closing the loop initiative, its easy to start making their partnership work for you.

Also, HootSuite will present at HubSpots three-day marketing conference in Boston running from August 27th through the 30th entitled, Inbound 2012. You can download the beta app. and take advantage of a series of educational resources by following this link. Take a look at the tools available to guide you:

* A white paper on closing the loop for social leads. Download now.

* A HootSuite University Lecture Series led by HubSpot Social Media Scientist about the Science of Social Media, Dan Zarrella. Watch today.

* The Science of Inbound Marketing A world-record breaking webinar hosted by HootSuite and HubSpot. Register here!

Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite Media, Inc. comments on the sheer utility of partnering with HubSpot:

Social media spending is on the rise. We watch as companies invest significant dollars into driving marketing campaigns using social networks as the next marketing platform,

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HootSuite & HubSpot Announce Partnership to Close the Loop on Social Media Marketing