PRESS RELEASE
Company accelerates growth by deepening data team and technology
McLean, VA and New York. NY. – November 1, 2011 – Clearspring, provider of the largest social sharing and analytics platform, AddThis, announced today it has acquired XGraph, Inc., a leading data science company focused on modeling and monetizing the web-wide social graph. Clearspring’s massive reach and proprietary real-time data processing capability, coupled with XGraph’s audience technology, create the largest multi-graph platform on the open web— mapping 1.2 billion user’s connections by brand affiliation, intent and social behavior.
The investment in XGraph’s data science capabilities marks another step on Clearspring’s rapid growth trajectory. XGraph’s team has deep data science expertise with applied backgrounds in advertising, sociology, mathematics and computer science. Their unique technology dynamically organizes users by shared connections and interests. XGraph’s team and platform will drive Clearspring’s existing efforts with publishers, advertisers and agencies forward while also setting the stage for new innovation.
“Clearspring is at the epicenter of two major shifts online—the web becoming social and personal, and advertising becoming data-driven and accountable. The common thread in both changes is data. To compete in this new world, companies will not only need the ability to access and process big data, but also have the ability to activate that data to create value for consumers, publishers and advertisers,” said Ramsey McGrory, Clearspring’s new Chief Executive. “The combined company has the people, technology and data to enable our clients to stay at the forefront of these changes. 2012 will be a breakout year for Clearspring.”
For advertisers, agencies and trading desks, Clearspring will immediately be able to provide the largest multi-graph audience targeting capabilities available on the open web. By using this technology to identify a brand’s core audiences and finding millions of other connected and like-minded people online, the company can now drive more efficient spending and increased campaign performance. Clearspring also plans to leverage this new capability to deliver publishers unique audience insights, monetization capabilities and actionable data products in the coming year.
“Most companies only capture one dimension of how we’re all connected, whether it be our friends or people we share with—a single graph approach. XGraph not only models these social connections, but also multiple other types of connections such as brand affiliations, intent and more—a multi-graph approach,” said Key Compton, XGraph’s CEO. “We’re truly excited to leverage our technology to unlock the value of Clearspring’s massive data set and help publishers and advertisers truly harness the power of the web-wide interest graph.”
XGraph is headquartered in New York with an office in Silicon Valley. All XGraph employees based in New York will join Clearspring’s office there. Clearspring plans to keep the office in Silicon Valley. The combined company will have 85 employees nationwide.
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About Clearspring Technologies
Clearspring is the leader in connecting publishers, services and advertisers to audiences on the social web. Clearspring’s AddThis platform enables leading publishers to distribute and track digital content such as web pages, widgets and videos to social networks, bookmarking sites, blogs and more. AddThis is used by over 10 million unique domains reaching over 1.2 billion unique users monthly. Clearspring’s Audience Platform leverages aggregate data from AddThis to allow advertisers and publishers to target these socially-connected audiences via real-time bidding platforms. Visit www.clearspring.com to learn more.
