October 21, 2010
ShopSocial secures $1.1M for social commerce
BuzzLogic co-founder and former CEO Todd Parsons still working on social media and advertising
Social shopping site ShopSocial (tongue twister!) has raised $1.2 million in funding, according to an SEC filing.
While the startup has yet to publicly comment on the funding, the filing lists Todd Parsons, Marc Michel and Rob Siegel as “Related Persons” in the round. Michel is a partner at Metamorphic Ventures in New York City and Siegel is a general partner at X/Seed Capital Management in Silicon Valley. Both Metamorphic and X/Seed Capital are early stage venture firms.
Parsons, the first listed on the form, is the very same who co-founded and once served as CEO for BuzzLogic, a digital media company that helps publishers optimize advertising for social media.
BuzzLogic has been pretty quiet lately, but Parsons has apparently been hard at work building up a new company, ShopSocial, which plants itself firmly at the crossroads between social media and e-commerce. Basically, the company lets brands, businesses and merchants supplement their ads and product pages with buttons for users to share the content on Facebook.
Don’t call it “just another share button,” though. The idea behind ShopSocial is that users will be rewarded monetarily for sharing stuff with their friends. For example, post a Gap peacoat to your News Feed and you’ll receive $5. It’s a really simple (and great) idea, but I'm sure some complications need ironing out. (How many of these offers can one user accumulate? What happens if the user takes the $5 and then immediately deletes the post from their Facebook?)
ShopSocial is still in beta, probably working out a lot of these extra details, and wants to launch later this quarter.
By the way: don’t be alarmed if you’re experiencing a bout of déjà vu; a very similarly-named social commerce startup (called ShopSocially) just raised a very similarly-sized funding round ($1.1 million) less than three months ago. This is obviously a hot trend, so expect to see even more startups cropping up in this space.
Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs
Twelvefold Media
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Twelvefold Media (formerly BuzzLogic) is the only emotive-based media company that helps brands target, reach and persuade engaged audiences by delivering the right ad, in the right place at the right time to the most motivated customers in the right mindset.
Twelvefold creates customized digital media packages with proprietary technology that utilizes emotive-based targeting at the page level and real-time bidding—at scale and without cookies—to achieve superior results and insights for brands and advertisers.
Clientele includes Kraft, Toyota, Best Buy, Microsoft, and Starbucks. The company is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles
Metamorphic Ventures, LLC
Angel group/VC
Joined Vator on
Metamorphic Ventures is a New York City based venture capital fund that invests in start-up and early stage businesses exclusively in digital media and transaction processing technology sectors.
Metamorphic Ventures believes that vast new waves of innovation and business opportunity are on their way leveraging the build out of the fixed and mobile broadband network. In fact, many are already here. Metamorphic funds those early stage businesses in the digital media and transaction processing technology sectors. While it may appear that these are two distinct sectors, it is our view that they are in fact in the process of converging and that Metamorphic Ventures is one of a few venture firms with the expertise in both domains. The partners of Metamorphic Ventures seek to be great partners to those entrepreneurs pursuing the development of new and innovative businesses in these sectors.
The partners of Metamorphic are experienced entrepreneurs and business builders and have all gone through the emotional ups and downs of building start -up companies while bringing deep understanding and contacts within our sectors of focus. We assist our entrepreneurs in many aspects of the venture needs from the founding stage onward, building their company to become profitable while realizing excellent growth potential.
ShopSocially
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
ShopSocial.ly makes it easy and fun to give and get shopping help from friends. You can help friends out by sharing your shopping expertise. And you can ask their help when you are buying something
Todd Parsons
Joined Vator on
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