Check out this great piece from Crowd Factory CEO Sanjay Dholakia published in Silicon India Magazine in April of 2012

Established in 2005, CrowdFactory is a Social Promotion and Referral Platform used by both B2B and B2C companies as well as small and large companies. It helps marketers amplify their marketing programs by adding a powerful and quantifiable social boost to every marketing channel.

Facebook and other social networks have completely changed the world we live in. Not since the mid 1990s when the first Internet wave came along have we seen such a massive sea change in the way we socialize, entertain each other and ourselves, communicate with colleagues and friends and even interact with our leaders and governments. Just Google “Arab Spring” and you’ll see the massive impact social networks have made on our political landscape alone this past year.  Check out the entire article here…!

Check out this awesome article from LEENA RAO in Techcrunch!

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

Marketo, a company that provides an on-demand marketing software that allows businesses to optimize their sales and marketing efforts has acquired Crowd Factory, a startup that creates white-label social marketing applications. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Crowd Factory’s social marketing applications allows marketers to amplify and optimize campaigns, and view social-analytics and interactions. The platform allows marketers to add social applications and messages to every channel – Facebook Pages, Twitter and LinkedIn feeds, landing pages, websites, banner ads and emails.

Read the whole article here….

When a new customer joins the Crowd Factory family there are a few papers to sign, well, we’ve been signing a lot of papers.   While it is quick and painless to join the best platform in social media marketing we are the Just a quick look at some of our newest customers in the last week (not to worry, everything is signed online, we are saving trees!)

Gives marketers instant access business professionals.

Connect business applications, on-premise & in the cloud.

The #1 cloud-based phone system for your business

Alberta Motor Association helps thousands of travellers.

Crowd Factory, the leader in social media marketing platform,  is honored to be hosting a webinar with one of our favorite customers, Quickoffice, the worldwide leader in mobile office solutions. Check out these details!

How Quickoffice Boosts Awareness and Drives Revenue with Measurable Social Campaigns

When: April 13th, 2012 at 10am/pst (1pm/est)

Companies are scrambling to leverage social networks to drive business results, but most are getting lost in a sea of noise and confusion.  Sponsored by Crowd Factory and Quickoffice, join this webcast to learn how the leader in mobile business apps, Quickoffice is running powerful, measurable social campaigns to generate millions of peer-to-peer endorsements across social networks and acquire new customers from the social web.

This event will be hosted by two amazing presenters!

Jason Dyer Vice President, Quickoffice Jason Dyer is VP  of direct-to-consumer sales and marketing for Quickoffice.	Sanjay Dholakia CEO, Crowd Factory Sanjay is the CEO at Crowd Factory, the leading Social Campaign Management Platform.

Crowd Factory is feeling a great deal of pride for our Senior Account Director Brian Murch who was interviewed by CNET Interactive about Crowd Factory’s involvement with building the social media presence for the 3rd biggest movie to ever open at the box office, Hunger Games. Check out this awesome clip courtesy of Kara Tsuboi and Lionsgate films.

  For "The Hunger Games," the marketing team at Lions Gate Entertainment developed a social-networking framework on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr for fans to then create a community. For example, the studio put together 13 Facebook pages related to the film, one for each of the districts or states in the book's fictitious country. On those pages, Lions Gate encouraged fans to run for mayor of the district, apply for a district ID card, and then follow links to more blogs and photos. Of course, all along the way, you can find buttons and links to help you purchase tickets for opening weekend. The final step, or call to action, is to share all of that activity with your network so the cycle can begin again. In short, that's called going viral.

As you know, Facebook has announced some exciting changes to their Brand Pages and the transition to the new Timeline format. Crowd Factory has been working to increase the size of our Facebook apps to better fit the new wider tab format. We’re excited to announce the new wider Crowd Factory apps will be available to publish to your new Timeline Page by 3/30/12!

In preparation for this new format, we have included some updated dimensions for our Facebook apps below. Additionally, we wanted to give you an overview of what else has changed with your Facebook Apps and Brand Page.

 Changes to your Crowd Factory Apps on Facebook

• App Location – Your apps will be featured more prominently near the top of the timeline page below your cover photo (moved from the currently left side of the page).
• App Image – The app image is now much larger (111 x 74 pixels) and you can customize it or use the Crowd Factory default image.
• Wider App Canvas – The width of app tabs has increased to 810px from 520px.
• Facebook Like Button – The Like button has moved to the top right corner of the page from the top center position. Existing graphics pointing to the old Like button position should be updated.
• Default Tabs – Facebook has removed the ability to set a default landing tab for visitors to your page. The Timeline will be the default view for your Page. You will be able, however, to pin your most important posts at the top of your Timeline for up to seven days.

Overview of Facebook Timeline for Brand Pages

• Cover Photo – Showcase your brand by creating a giant banner to put at the top of your Timeline. It’s important to note that the photo cannot contain explicit calls to action or Facebook features.
• Timeline – Add milestones or make some featured posts larger than others to better tell a story about your brand. Additionally, pin important posts at the top of your Timeline for up to seven days.
• Admin Features – Access to more Facebook Insights reporting dashboards and engage in direct messages with your fans.

New Image Dimensions for Crowd Factory Facebook Apps

• All Apps
  • Banner Image: 728x90px
  • Background Image: 728px wide
• Open Group Offer, Personal Group Offer, Referral Offer, Flash Deal, Sweepstakes
  • Product Image: 420x270px
• • Versus App
  • Entry Image: 300x300px
• Voting App
  • Entry Image: 150x150px
• Polls App
  • Entry Image: 60x60px
• Video Share App
  • Video Player: 640x480px
• • Like Gate
  • Pre and Post Like Images: 728px

For more info on the Facebook Timeline changes, visit http://www.facebook.com/about/pages.

Stay tuned for more updates from Crowd Factory regarding these and other changes and features!

“Marketing advice will abound at SXSWi but only one panel will focus on music. Crowd Factory CEO Sanjay Dholakia will lead a panel about new social marketing techniques titled “Forget Radio, Let Your Fans Market Your Music,” …

Check out the complete article on the Billboard.biz website.  Glenn writes down the details you need to know if you are attending, for example:

While South by Southwest’s Interactive (SXSWi) and Music festivals are essentially two separate events, they do have one major thing in common: music. Many music companies will be at both conferences, having meetings, speaking on panels and networking at evening after-parties. Expect the typically heavy flow of press releases as companies announce new products and partnerships. And look for tech enthusiasts to vet a slew of next-big-thing mobile apps looking to use SXSW as a launching pad.

Among the highlights could be a solo presentation from Spotify chief content officer Ken Parks at 11am on Tuesday, March 13. Parks should have plenty to say about recent criticism of notable Spotify holdouts – Coldplay, Adele, the Black Keys – and streaming models’ payouts to artists and labels. Any bloggers looking for a “gotcha” quote probably won’t get one here, however. Spotify executives are extremely good at staying on-message.

The hottest media startups presented at the AlwaysOn OnMedia event in New York City last week.  And of course Crowd Factory CEO Sanjay Dholakia was there to present on how to leverage social marketing.  We Thank you to Bettina Bennett (@‏chiefmaverick) for this awesome pic of the session.   Even better just a few days after the event Michael Miller wrote this awesome piece in PC Magazine about those that really stood out to him during the event:

How Startups Want to Better Track You

By Michael J. Miller

Media startups are alive and well, if the AlwaysOn OnMedia conference I attended earlier this week in New York is any indication. AlwaysOn debuted its list of the top 100 private media companies. Many people I talked to at the conference said they thought the big boom in new marketing technology companies was slowing down, but I certainly saw a number of new entrants pushing technology for better targeting advertising and marketing.

Recall that much of the online advertising you see is now delivered via a “real-time bidding” system. Advertisers (or actually, software working on behalf of the advertisers and their agencies) offer to pay a small amount of money to serve up a personalized ad, based on what they know about you. That’s one reason that advertising companies often put “tracking cookies” on your system.

The advertisers don’t actually get information on each individual, but rather they pick attributes they want to target. For instance, a stroller manufacturer might target people who have surfed maternity websites, whether or not they are on one of those sites at the moment. Better targeting consumers and increasing the efficiency of the ad dollars spent has been a big focus of media technology companies over the past few years.

More recently, with the rise of social networks, a lot of work has gone into knowing even more about potential customers—hence why companies such as Facebook and Google want you to sign in. Many companies are also working to better engage their “fans,” and thus sell more products.

Some of these products are designed for behind-the-scenes use. As a potential customer, you probably won’t notice these things, but they are created to help companies sell more things. Here are a few of the stand-out companies:

Crowdfactory has widgets to add social marketing to webpages, email, and other sites.

Adnetik provides “real-time targeting” information, designed to help marketers better target their ads using a combination of different data sources about potential customers.

Linkstorm offers advertisers ways of dynamically updating their ads, depending on why people are linking to it in the first place.

Horizon Studios‘ Catalysta is a sales incentive program that enlists social media to measure and improve the return on investment.

MediaForge is focused on creating interactive and personalized ads, including “re-targeting,” aiming at customers who have visited a website recently, but haven’t made a purchase.

The Echo System aims to use social media and, in particular, social analytics to increase engagement on general websites, rather than on something like Facebook itself. CEO Lance Neuhauser made the point that “social is a behavior, not a site,” with the behavior working across the Web.

Crowdscience offers an audience management system for publishers that combines surveys with machine learning.

As you can see, there’s no shortage of technology designed to help advertisers better target customers and sell more products. On the flipside, there are plenty of technologies designed to better track who you are and where you are going online.

Crowd Factory is honored to be listed about one of the “Hottest Companies in San Francisco”, by Lead411  Check out our review:

Crowd Factory
Crowd Factory is a complete Social Campaign Management Platform that helps marketers accelerate word-of-mouth marketing, grow their marketing database with unique social profiles and attract new customers. Hundreds of companies, including HP, Molson Coors, Sony Music, Jive Software, Marketo, Quickoffice and British Telecom use Crowd Factory’s social marketing software to drive real business results every day. Crowd Factory landed $6.5M in funding from Storm Ventures in January of 2011.

LOS ANGELES, Calif., – February 21, 2012 - In order to recognize the fastest growing technology companies in San Francisco and the East Bay, Lead411 is proud to announce the release of its “Hottest Companies in San Francisco” award.

Background
Each day, the Lead411 research team scours through 600+ press releases and business articles including venture capital fundings, company launches, new office openings, customer press releases, etc. This information has given insight to which are the fastest growing companies in the U.S. Their “Hottest Companies” awards have been created to recognize these fast growing companies in different geographic regions. This particular list originally started with over 2600 companies and it has been narrowed down to the top 80.
“This is our 3rd Annual San Francisco award. We are pleased with the recognition the Award has received over the past few years,” said Tom Blue, CEO of Lead411, “and we are very proud of the respected list of companies for the 2012 winners.”
How the Winners were Chosen
First, all companies must be in either the Software, Wireless, Internet, Hardware, or Media industry and be a privately held organization, and be within San Francisco. From there, each company must meet one or more of the following requirements;

•  100% increase in revenues over the past 2 years; OR
• Over $5M in funding in the past 2 year

Some of the other companies chosen include:

Metacafe, Inc
Metacafe is the first entertainment destination solely dedicated to showcasing the best videos from the world of Movies, Video Games, Sports, Music and TV. Metacafe is the trusted source that keeps millions of viewers plugged into their entertainment passions every day. The company connects marquee brand advertisers with their target consumers via close association with the most popular entertainment content on the Web. Metacafe attracts more than 15 million unique monthly U.S. viewers. Metacafe collected $5M in funding in June of 2010.

BrightRoll
With reach to 160 million monthly unique viewers globally, BrightRoll is the world’s largest and most trusted video ad network and the leading provider of digital video advertising services. The BrightRoll Network has access to billions of video impressions per month enabling advertisers to execute smart digital video campaigns across a massive pool of web and mobile video inventory. BrightRoll got a hold of $30M in financing from Trident Capital in November of 2011.

Twitter
Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find interesting. Simply find the accounts you find most compelling and follow the conversations. The company received $400M in financing in September of 2011.

Formspring
Formspring is a global social network, where members ask each other questions and learn more about one other through interesting, funny and personal responses. People use Formspring to get to know friends (and friends of friends), have conversations with favorite celebrities, and connect with others around common interests. One of the fastest growing social networks ever, Formspring has more than 4 billion responses posted. Formspring received $11.5M in financing from Redpoint Ventures in January of 2011.

BrightTALK Inc
BrightTALK provides webinars and videos for professionals and their communities. Every day thousands of thought leaders are actively sharing their insights, their ideas and their most up-to-date knowledge with professionals all over the globe through the webinar and video technologies that BrightTALK has created. BrightTALK received $20.5M in financing from North Bridge Growth Equity in September of 2011.

Idle Games
Idle Games® has built the Idle Engine, a massively distributed simulation platform designed to provide an unsharded game world with patent-pending synchronous and asynchronous social game mechanics. We’ve also created the worlds’ first polytheistic god game with exploding bunnies. The company received $10M in funding in October of 2011.

PowerReviews Inc
PowerReviews is the world’s largest social commerce network, with more than 35 million products and services across more than 5,500 websites. PowerReviews helps manufacturers, brands and retailers organize and manage consumer insights to drive sales, increase traffic, shape R&D and build brand loyalty. The company’s open network of more than 23 million consumer insights serves as the underlying engine for a new generation of commerce. PowerReviews has raised $6.1M in venture money led by Menlo Ventures in March of 2010.

The GigaOM Network
GigaOM has grown into the leading provider of online media, events and research for global technology innovators. The company is one of the most credible and insightful voices at the intersection of business and technology, with an online audience of more than 4.5 million monthly unique visitors; industry-leading events, including Structure, Mobilize, GigaOM RoadMap, and Structure:Data; and a pioneering market research service and digital community, GigaOM Pro, which provides expert analysis and research on emerging technology markets. GigaOM landed $8M in financing in May of 2011.

Martini Media
Martini Media is the digital media and content platform for engaging the audience with the most money and influence online. With more than 1,000 publishers organized across multiple lifestyle and business verticals, Martini Media has helped the world’s leading brands reach over 90 million consumers across the globe that invest in their passions at work and play. Martini Media’s full-service marketing capabilities encompass display, video, mobile, social, and audience targeting to effectively engage the most valuable audience online at scale. Martini Media received $13M in venture funding from Granite Venturesin December of 2011.

Yammer Inc
Yammer (www.yammer.com) is the leader in enterprise social networking, providing a secure way for employees to communicate, collaborate, and share information. The basic version of Yammer is free, and customers can pay to upgrade their network to receive additional administrative and security controls, priority customer service and a designated customer success manager. Yammer received $17M in financing from Social Capital Partnership in September of 2011.

PlayFirst Inc
PlayFirst is dedicated to creating and publishing popular games that appeal to the mass market through multiple consumer platforms. PlayFirst is focused on a game portfolio that is accessible and entertaining for both new and seasoned online game players. PlayFirst received $9.2M in funding in October of 2010.

Cantaloupe Systems
Cantaloupe Systems is the pioneer and market leader in Cloud-based technologies for the $55 billion global vending industry. Cantaloupe Systems’ Seed Platform enables vending operators to deliver better customer service, reduce costs and generate larger margins. This solution provides an automated retail platform for scheduling, pre-kitting, merchandising, and cashless using hosted systems and wireless technologies. Cantaloupe Systems has raised $12.4M in financing from Foundation Capital in April of 2010.

mFoundry
Trusted by more than 500 banks and credit unions, mFoundry is a leading provider of mobile solutions for financial institutions and retailers. Our mobile banking and mobile payments solutions are based upon a market-proven platform that was designed to help our clients create deeper, more valuable relationships with their customers. mFoundry has raised $18M in venture money from MasterCard Incorporated in December of 2011.

Mashery, Inc
Mashery, the world’s leading provider of API technology and services, helps more than 100 top brands—including USA TODAY, Hoover’s, Klout, Associated Press, RDIO and Expedia—build digital distribution platforms that open new distribution channels, speed time-to-market, and spur innovation. Mashery takes a holistic approach to APIs—from crafting platform strategy and setting business objectives, to managing API delivery and facilitating relationships with a network of 130,000 developers. Mashery landed $11M in financing from OpenView Venture Partners in May of 2011.

Marin Software
Marin Software provides the world’s leading online advertising management platform for advertisers and agencies to manage their paid search, social media, display advertising, and mobile campaigns. Marin Software’s powerful bid management and ppc optimization tools will help you generate more conversions and save you time. Marin Software got a hold of $30M in financing from Temasek in February of 2012.

Practice Fusion
Practice Fusion provides a free, web-based Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system to physicians. With medical charting, scheduling, e-prescribing (eRx), lab integrations, referral letters, Meaningful Use certification, unlimited support and a Personal Health Record for patients, Practice Fusion’s EMR addresses the complex needs of today’s healthcare providers and disrupts the health IT status quo. The company received $31M in financing in the past two years.

ClearSlide
ClearSlide provides the leading cloud-based sales communication platform designed specifically to meet the communication needs of enterprise sales professionals to help them close more business. Headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., ClearSlide is funded by top Silicon Valley investors including Greylock Partners and Felicis Ventures. Expedia, Rackspace and Dow Jones count among ClearSlide’s customers. ClearSlide landed $11M in funding from Greylock Partners in September of 2011.

Dropbox
The mission of Dropbox is to simplify life for people around the world. Dropbox lets people bring their docs, photos and videos everywhere and share them easily. The service has more than 45 million users in 175 countries saving one billion files every three days. Dropbox was founded in San Francisco in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. The company received $250M in funding led by Index Ventures in October of 2011.

Stripe
Stripe is a simple, developer-friendly way to accept payments online. We believe that enabling transactions on the web is a problem rooted in code, not finance, and we want to help put more websites in business. Stripe got a hold of $18M in financing from Sequoia Capital in February of 2012.

Zinio LLC
Zinio is where the world reads, explores and interacts with the largest selection of magazines across today’s most popular devices. The company is the leader in digital and mobile content consumption, connection, and distribution. Zinio users can easily search stories and topics that they are passionate about, share with friends, save and curate content, shop for products, and store all of their favorite magazines in Zinio across all of their favorite devices. Zinio received $20M in funding in November of 2011.

Grockit Inc
Most people know Grockit as the most fun, social and engaging way to learn new things. Smart business types know Grockit is a global leader in the huge market for learning platforms and services. Over 1M people worldwide have used Grockit to successfully prepare for tests. Grockit gives you social, collaborative and personal learning, fueled by adaptive learning algorithms and up-front analysis that identifies and compensates for your learning strengths and weaknesses. The company received $7M in funding from Atlas Venture in October of 2011.

GoodData
GoodData is a disruptive, cloud-based enterprise platform for business intelligence. The GoodData technology is intuitive, secure and fast. It helps convert big data into profitable insights and strategies for business executives. GoodData is trusted by companies like Enterasys, Capgemini, and Software AG, and embedded into offerings from cloud innovators like Zendesk, Get Satisfaction and Pardot. Headquartered in San Francisco, GoodData collected $15M in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz in August of 2011.

List of Company Names:
3VR Security, Inc, 99designs, Affine Systems, Anaplan Inc, AppDynamics, Bleacher Report, Bricsnet US, LLC, BrightRoll, BrightTALK Inc, Cantaloupe Systems, ClearSlide, CloudFlare, CollabNet Inc, Crowd Factory, Crowdcast , CrowdFlower , Demandbase, Inc, Dropbox, eCert Inc., Eventbrite, Inc., Evolv On-Demand, Expensify Inc, Extole, Flingo, Flite, Inc, Flurry, Inc., Formspring, Framehawk, Get Satisfaction, Inc., GoodData, Grockit Inc, Hotel Tonight Inc. , Huddle US, Idle Games, InsideView, Jaspersoft, Jawbone, Joyent Inc, KIXEYE, Kontagent, KXEN Inc, Lumosity, Marin Software, Martini Media, Mashery, Inc, Metacafe, Inc, mFoundry, mobeam inc, New Relic, PlayFirst Inc, PowerReviews Inc, Practice Fusion, Prosper Marketplace, Inc, Quid Inc, RadiumOne, Rocket Ninja Inc, Scality, Scribd, Servicemax Inc, Socialcast, Spigit, StackMob, Steelwedge Inc., Stitcher, Stripe, StumbleUpon, Sugar Inc, Tapjoy, Taulia Inc., The GigaOM Network, Ticketfly, TokBox Inc, Twelvefold Media, Twitter, VirtuOz Inc, Xobni Corporation, Xoom Corporation, Yammer Inc, Zimride, Inc, Zinio LLC,

About Lead411
Lead411 provides information, news, and research about U.S. companies and their executives. Founded in 2001, its goal has been to focus on quality corporate data that is valid and useful rather than producing as many company records as possible. In addition, Lead411 tracks company news in order to alert its customers about venture financing, new hires, hiring plans, etc. Customers include Gartner, Administaff and ADP.