LivingSocial is a relatively new social shopping company for local neighborhoods. Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO and co-founder LivingSocial says “With this investment we’ll bring LivingSocial to tens of millions of new members around the world and introduce innovative ways to connect our members to merchants.”
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
SocialVibe, a digital advertising technology company based in Los Angeles, recently secured $20 million in equity financing from Norwest Venture Partners, along with existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Jafco Ventures and Pinnacle Ventures. Jeff Crowe from Norwest Venture Partners will be joining SocialVibe’s board of directors. The company plans to use the growth capital to further spread its brand engagement advertising platform around the world.
Social Vibe has worked with GE, Best Buy, Disney, Nestle, McDonalds, Coke, American Express, AT&T and Toyota. During the 2011 Super Bowl, the company placed Kia Motor ads across Zynga’s network of games, including FarmVille, PetVille and Mafia Wars, giving 100 million social game players free Zynga game currency in exchange for interacting with an ad for a new Optima mid-size sedan.
“With consumers now in control of the conversation, brands are hungry for technologies that enable them to target an audience at scale, create an emotional connection and drive purchase intent,” said Jeff Crowe, general partner of Norwest Venture Partners in a statement. “SocialVibe is changing the nature of the brand advertising model, and the company’s early success with hundreds of leading brands simply reinforces that the time is right for a shift of brand dollars to social media.”
A recent webinar by Inside Investor Relations dug into the factors that can mean the difference between good and bad shareholder communications via social media, and the polls conducted live during the event reveal much about how companies see the value of social media in dealing with their owners.
Our neighbors to the north are ready to make social media an industry standard.
Startups have seen a double digit increase in VC investments in 2010, which marks the first ever such increase since 2007 – according to MoneyTree Report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and National Venture Capital Association. VC’s invested $21.8 billion in 3,227 deals in 2010, which represents an increase of 19% in dollars and 12% in terms of deals done compared to the previous year.
What are the implications of the world’s largest search and video provider – Google - putting a healthy investment into Zynga, the world’s largest social games maker? We’ll get a chance to find out in the coming months if the recently reported TechCrunch rumor that Google is about to invest up to $200 million into Zynga is true. We take a look at the situation and analyze the implications after the jump.
