Sonic Foundry Featured in New Book Empowered

MADISON, Wis., Sept. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonic Foundry, Inc. (Nasdaq: SOFO), the recognized market leader for rich media webcasting and knowledge management, today announced the company is featured in the new book, Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business (Harvard Business Review Press), written by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler of independent research firm, Forrester Research, Inc.

Published this week, Empowered provides real-world examples of innovative companies and leaders who use technologies such as social, mobile, video and the internet to solve customer problems. Last year, Sonic Foundry won the Forrester Groundswell Award in the Business-to-Business Energizing category for its success with UNLEASH 2009, the Mediasite User Conference. The conference achieved recognition for an integrated campaign that successfully leveraged online video, webcasts via Mediasite, email and social media to increase attendance by 15 percent in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Sonic Foundry's story is featured in chapter 6 of the new book. An on-demand webcast of the authors previewing the book is available at http://www.myforrester.net/forms/Empowered_Webinar.

"Sonic Foundry took advantage of its strength with video to record and broadcast interviews with members at the conference, and to Webcast the entire event. By featuring users (and retweeting their tweets), the company spread the enthusiasm of a live event to many who weren't there in person," writes Bernoff and Schadler in Empowered (Harvard Business Review Press; September 2010) on page 102.

"The annual conference of the Mediasite User Group remains the largest physical gathering of these users globally. While attendance has consistently grown each year, we recognized in 2009 that the changing economic conditions would potentially have a significant impact on the ability of our customers to attend on-site," said Erica St. Angel, vice president of marketing at Sonic Foundry. "To help them overcome budget cuts and travel bans, we took the conference to them, online. Sonic Foundry Event Services webcast every session via our platform Mediasite, and we launched social media sites where customers could network with us and each other. The result was increased attendance, conference satisfaction, revenue and lasting relationships between users that are still active today. We're honored to be recognized among the companies highlighted by the Empowered authors as a reproducible example of how to energize a user base."

About Sonic Foundry®, Inc.

Sonic Foundry (NASDAQ: SOFO, www.sonicfoundry.com) is the global leader for rich media webcasting and knowledge management, providing enterprise communication solutions for education, business and government. Powered by Mediasite, the patented webcasting platform which automates the capture, management, delivery and search of lectures, online training and briefings, Sonic Foundry empowers people to transform the way they communicate. Through the Mediasite platform and its Event Services group, the company helps customers connect a dynamic, evolving world of shared knowledge and envisions a future where learners and workers around the globe use webcasting to bridge time and distance, accelerate research and improve performance. Product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of Sonic Foundry, Inc. or their respective owners.

Certain statements contained in this news release regarding matters that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Because such forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to, uncertainties pertaining to continued market acceptance for Sonic Foundry's products, its ability to succeed in capturing significant revenues from media services and/or systems, the effect of new competitors in its market, integration of acquired business and other risk factors identified from time to time in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE Sonic Foundry, Inc.