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Monthly Archives: October 2008

JS-Kit extends its reach to 900,000 registered publishers ( comments)

October 21st, 2008 | Tags: , , , , , | Posted in Announcements, Landscape
We have great news to share. Here’s the summary.
  • JS-Kit extends its reach to 900,000 registered publishers by partnering with AOL/Userplane
  • First widget to be distributed via Userplane channels is the JS-Kit Rating Service
  • In economically challenging times with shrinking IT budgets, publishers can continue to lean on JS-Kit to expand their user experience at little cost
  • This is the latest in an ongoing set of announcements from JS-Kit to ensure that publishers have a stable and sustainable partner for now and into the future. (Previous announcements include HaloScan Acquisition, Partnerships with Evite, JetBlue, Experian, WorldNow, InfoWorld & $3.6m Series B Funding)

Today we’re excited to announce a partnership with AOL’s Userplane division. This partnership sees the two companies achieve a combined reach of over 900,000 registered publishers.

Userplane is the world’s premier social software provider for online communities and one of the largest global social media ad networks. It will offer JS-Kit’s Ratings service through Userplane’s distribution channels. JS-Kit will add Userplane’s Webchat application to its product suite.

As Sam Wick, the GM of Userplane and a VP at AOL said in the press release:

“Both Userplane and JS-Kit bring interaction to websites and, incredibly, our product offerings are 100% complementary.”

Here’s another piece of the Press Release with my comments:

“As IT budgets tighten in 2009, web publishers will be able to turn to our low cost, yet feature rich product suite, to achieve their objectives,” said Khris Loux, Chief Executive Officer, JS-Kit. “With this collaboration, publishers will also benefit by working with companies they know will be around. They can enjoy one-stop shopping with either of us, and they’ll get familiar with how our technologies work and can leverage that experience with any of our apps. It’s a great solution for everyone.”

In the economic downturn, companies are being forced to pare down, re-focus or opt out of their startups. The result is new types of opportunities and risks for both startups and the companies that partner with them.

This is the latest in an ongoing set of announcements from JS-Kit to ensure that publishers have a stable and sustainable partner for now and into the future. (Previous announcements include HaloScan Acquisition, Partnerships with Evite, JetBlue, Experian, WorldNow, InfoWorld &$3.6m Series B Funding)

Ultimately though, this is a win for both Userplane and JS-Kit’s customers and users. Rather than compete, the two companies will now be able to leverage each other’s product suite and remain focused on improving their core offerings and developing new features and delivering products.

The money side of the deal is pretty straight forward. Ads from Userplane’s social media ad network will flow through the Minichat product, providing monetization for both companies on any ads distributed through their use of the apps.

Khris Loux
CEO, JS-Kit

Coverage

ShareThis partners with JS-Kit to proliferate comments and sharing ( comments)

October 16th, 2008 | Tags: , , , | Posted in Announcements

ShareThis announced today that it is partnering with JS-Kit to more easily enable publishers and bloggers to share content posted on their sites. Whenever a site administer configures the ShareThis widget for their site, they’ll be able to quickly and easily add JS-Kit Comments, featuring threaded discussions, moderation and spam control, to their site as well. Similarly, publishers who add JS-Kit Comments to their sites will be able to quickly and easily configure and add a ShareThis widget to their sites, easing the process of sharing content to drive more traffic to their sites.

Social Widget Provider JS-Kit Raises $3.6M ( comments)

October 13th, 2008 | Tags: , , , | Posted in Announcements

JS-Kit Ensures Continued Innovation & Stability for its Web Publishers

  • JS-Kit is a leading provider of lightweight social widgets with over 550,000 registered sites using it’s hosted offerings, which include: Comments, Ratings, Product Reviews, & Polls.
  • The services are easy for publishers to install, simple to customize, and are an extremely low cost alternative to in-house development.
  • Web publishers seeking stability now have a “safe choice” for Web 2.0 services.
  • Funding has already enabled expansion of the development team to a dozen engineers, a quadrupling of the size of the data center, and the addition of industry visionary Chris Saad (Co-Founder DataPortability) as a Strategic Advisor.
  • Series B funding was led by Altos Ventures, with participation from Series A Investor TEF3.
  • Contact: khris@js-kit.com.

Today I am proud to announce that JS-Kit has closed a Series B funding round totaling $3.6M. The round was led by Altos Ventures with participation from our Series A investor TEF3.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the JS-Kit team for their unwavering commitment and hard work. I’d also like to thank our friends and partners who use JS-Kit on their sites and send us detailed feedback for improving the product — your passion fuels our motivation to continue delivering great products.

In just two short years, JS-Kit has delivered a range of widgets that make sites more functional by encouraging social interaction. We have been proud to be part of the social media revolution and look forward to taking things to the next level in the coming months and years.

To that end, this round of funding will be used for a variety of purposes.

An expansion of our development team has already begun. We are now at 12 engineers and plan to continue to grow that team to support our growing user base.

To support our growth, we will broaden our leadership and management team with several important additions. I am very pleased to share thatChris Saad (Co-Founder of the DataPortability Project, Media 2.0 Workgroup and APML) has joined JS-Kit as a Strategic Advisor to the company (read his post here). Other key hires are in process and will be announced shortly.

We are also expanding our commercial accounts through focused business development efforts to achieve profitability in the medium term.

Each of these areas provides key value to all our publisher partners who can rest assured that we have the development team necessary to continue to support the products, the leadership to execute on an exciting road map and a sustainable business model to ensure the company’s success now and into the future.

Stay tuned to the blog and/or the announcements mailing list to keep up-to-date with our developments.

I also encourage you to try the products and send us your feedback. We’re listening!

Khris Loux, CEO
khris@js-kit.com

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