Publishers find themselves in an increasingly competitive environment – with the barrier to create content so low, and with so many sources for people to choose from, they’re forced to adopt new tools like ad retargeting to keep users on their site. Another startup tackling visitor retention for publishers is Tynt, a startup that announced today it has been acquired by NYC company 33Across in what is reportedly an all-stock transaction. The two companies provide insight on user behaviour through their respective social graphs, and 33Across now owns all of Tynt’s assets including patents and filings, technology, analytics and toolsets.
Tynt helps publishers map interest-driven user behavior on their ‘interest graph,’ which provides data on over 500,000 websites. 33Across has been focused on marketers, and their Brand Graph suite of technology and tools helped clients identify potential users and customers. They claim to reach 1.25 billion users with their social and interest graph, and now they’ve expanded that audience to publishers with Tynt’s tools. Led by former Ogilvy and Yahoo! executives, 33Across has investment from First Round Capital and angel investors including David Rose, including $9 million in funding in January 2011.
“The objects we read, watch, recommend, and purchase are being accelerated through personal networks via explicit and implicit social influence. As a result, the world of marketing and publishing is forever transformed,” said Eric Wheeler, chief executive officer of 33Across, in a press release. “This acquisition is about the technology, tools, and real-time predictive systems that enable the biggest publishing and marketing brands in the world to connect their content and products into the social graph.”
Tynt’s main feature allows online content publishers to track copy and pasting on their site, which helps turns it into higher traffic and engagement and improved search rank. When users copy and paste text from a publisher, it automatically adds a URL link back to the content source. It then provides insight on what content is being shared, and helps keep users on a site longer.
Founded in Calgary in 2007 with offices in San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and New York, and clients including the New York Post and National Geographic, Tynt quickly built a following in the publishing world. They also impressed investors, with almost $12 million in funding to date. But while they bill their publishing tools as a suite of offerings, their core functionality is copy and paste tracking. It seems that 33Across is less concerned with that functionality, and more concerned with the idea of ‘big data’ and the ability to flesh out their Brand Graph for publishers and marketers.