This is a cross-post from our Foundry blog entry on our latest investment – in the microblogging company StockTwits. I’ve been working closely with Howard and Soren from the company as well as StockTwits investors Roger Ehrenberg and Tony Conrad as we’ve looked at the investment and worked on the financing. These guys are fantastic! For me it’s the chance to work with this team that’s the most exciting thing about today’s announcement. If you haven’t tried the service I’d encourage you to do so – there are links in the post below to grab the desktop client or directing you to the site. Give it a try and let me know what you think! Today StockTwits announced (release here)…
Category
Foundry Companies
Welcoming the new Lijit Welcome Wijit
Lijit quietly released a very cool new widget for users of their service (that’s you, right?). The new Lijit Welcome Wijit greets site visitors who come to your site via a search term and gives them a relevant roadmap of your site as it relates to the search query that brought them there. It’s great for your site visitors who now have additional context for their interest in your content. It’s also great for publishers who can now create a more sticky experience for their users and expand the cross pollination of their content. From Greg Keller’s post on the Lijit blog, the Welcom Wijit is about: Welcoming new readers to your site when they’ve linked in from somewhere else…e.g….
Are you a PPC expert? Read on…
One of our portfolio companies (a heretofore stealthy one at that) is looking for Pay Per Click stars (Google AdWords Qualified or SEMPO Institute training preferred) to join their crowdsourced PPC marketplace. If you’re a PPC marketing expert click here to find out more and sign up. Lots more on Trada (which we haven’t yet been talking about broadly) in the coming months as they really start to open up.
Test Engineers Needed!
Trada (one of our Boulder based portfolio companies) is looking to hire. They’re looking for a tech-skilled individual who thinks they can do just about everything, because they might be asked to. Primary role is testing their online advertising app but there’s a huge opportunity to contribute much more. There’s dev work; cloud systems admin; operations tasks; end-user support; and even customer facing account management tasks that can be added to the mix for the properly skilled (and properly motivated) individual. While still in stealth these guys are already rocking. Interested? contact Michael Lawless at mlawless@trada.com
Medialets
Today over on the Foundry Group blog, we announced an investment in Medialets – a mobile analytics and advertising company that helps mobile application developers track usage and other statistics about their applications and provides technology that enables them to monetize those applications via advertising. I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about Foundry’s "thematic" investing approach in the past (here’s the key post to read if you haven’t and you’re interested). It surprises people however, when they hear us talk about some of the investments we’ve made in online advertising not as "advertising" but as part of our glue theme. Specifically we view advertising through the lens of connective technologies – those that help advertisers connect with users and remove…