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| May 22 2008, 5:08 PM EDT (current) | troyjmorris | 495 words added |
| May 22 2008, 5:08 PM EDT | troyjmorris |
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Dow Jones Newswires
Wetpaint Swipes $25M For User-Gen Publishing
By Tomio Green
May 19, 2008
URL unavailable
While social networks are struggling to boost advertising rates, that doesn't mean user-generated content can't produce big ad dollars.
That's the argument from wiki service Wetpaint Inc., which has just raised $25 million in Series C funding. DAG Ventures and an unnamed investor co-led the funding with participation from existing investors Accel Partners, Frazier Technology Ventures and Trinity Ventures.
The Seattle company previously raised $5.25 million in 2005 and $9.6 million in 2007, bringing total funding to date to about $40 million.
More than 900,000 sites use Wetpaint's social publishing service to let their users quickly write their own comments and upload images, video or other content, the company said.
Wetpaint will use the funding to build out its technology and sales staff. It also has the flexibility to do acquisitions, Chief Executive Ben Elowitz said.
Companies such as News Corp.'s Fox, Capitol Records Inc., Dell Inc. and Oracle Corp. have signed up for the service because it attracts users back to the site, driving up traffic numbers, Elowitz said. In addition, user-generated content cuts down on costs because the content is free. "Every site is dying to be social," Elowitz said.
But unlike social networking sites, where ad rates have been disappointing even for large sites like Facebook and MySpace, social publishing can produce high-quality content for which advertisers are willing to pay, Elowitz said. Whereas most users click on people's profiles or photos in a social network, on a social publishing site, people click for information on a particular topic, Elowitz said.
"One of the most stable media models is publishing," Elowitz said. "We get monetization rates of publishing sites. We get rates 10 to 20 times higher or more than what social networks get."
Elowitz pointed to a Wetpaint site for Fox's television show "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," where users provide descriptions of each episode and other information about the show. Fox is owned by VentureWire parent News Corp.
Wetpaint today launched a new service called Wetpaint Inject that integrates its service directly into publishers' Web sites. This will give publishers direct traffic numbers on Google and other search engines. It will also integrate with these sites' user profiles, increasing their social communities. Previously, clicking on a Wetpaint service on a client's site would take a user to a white-labeled service on Wetpaint's site.
Companies that have already begun using this new service include movie community site Flixster Inc.
Competitors in this space include Wikia Inc., formed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and backed by $14 million from Amazon.com Inc., Bessemer Venture Partners and Omidyar Network; and Eurekster Inc., backed by $7 million from Technology Venture Partners, Transcosmos Investments and others.
Wetpaint had 1.3 million unique U.S. visitors in April, up from 300,000 a year ago, according to comScore. Wikia meanwhile had 1.8 million in April, with no reported numbers in the year-ago period.
Wetpaint Swipes $25M For User-Gen Publishing
By Tomio Green
May 19, 2008
URL unavailable
While social networks are struggling to boost advertising rates, that doesn't mean user-generated content can't produce big ad dollars.
That's the argument from wiki service Wetpaint Inc., which has just raised $25 million in Series C funding. DAG Ventures and an unnamed investor co-led the funding with participation from existing investors Accel Partners, Frazier Technology Ventures and Trinity Ventures.
The Seattle company previously raised $5.25 million in 2005 and $9.6 million in 2007, bringing total funding to date to about $40 million.
More than 900,000 sites use Wetpaint's social publishing service to let their users quickly write their own comments and upload images, video or other content, the company said.
Wetpaint will use the funding to build out its technology and sales staff. It also has the flexibility to do acquisitions, Chief Executive Ben Elowitz said.
Companies such as News Corp.'s Fox, Capitol Records Inc., Dell Inc. and Oracle Corp. have signed up for the service because it attracts users back to the site, driving up traffic numbers, Elowitz said. In addition, user-generated content cuts down on costs because the content is free. "Every site is dying to be social," Elowitz said.
But unlike social networking sites, where ad rates have been disappointing even for large sites like Facebook and MySpace, social publishing can produce high-quality content for which advertisers are willing to pay, Elowitz said. Whereas most users click on people's profiles or photos in a social network, on a social publishing site, people click for information on a particular topic, Elowitz said.
"One of the most stable media models is publishing," Elowitz said. "We get monetization rates of publishing sites. We get rates 10 to 20 times higher or more than what social networks get."
Elowitz pointed to a Wetpaint site for Fox's television show "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," where users provide descriptions of each episode and other information about the show. Fox is owned by VentureWire parent News Corp.
Wetpaint today launched a new service called Wetpaint Inject that integrates its service directly into publishers' Web sites. This will give publishers direct traffic numbers on Google and other search engines. It will also integrate with these sites' user profiles, increasing their social communities. Previously, clicking on a Wetpaint service on a client's site would take a user to a white-labeled service on Wetpaint's site.
Companies that have already begun using this new service include movie community site Flixster Inc.
Competitors in this space include Wikia Inc., formed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and backed by $14 million from Amazon.com Inc., Bessemer Venture Partners and Omidyar Network; and Eurekster Inc., backed by $7 million from Technology Venture Partners, Transcosmos Investments and others.
Wetpaint had 1.3 million unique U.S. visitors in April, up from 300,000 a year ago, according to comScore. Wikia meanwhile had 1.8 million in April, with no reported numbers in the year-ago period.
