Buddy Media Reports Record Growth as Investment in Social Software Accelerates

NEW YORK, Jan. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Buddy Media, the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world's top ten global advertisers, today announced record growth for 2011, fueled by winning more than 300 new customers, including some of the world's most recognizable global brands such as Citibank, IBM, Volvo, New York Life, Yoplait, and the National Football League.

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Buddy Media has doubled in size, from just over 100 employees in January 2011 to more than 225 globally today. The company scaled aggressively to meet demand and in 2011 opened new offices in London, San Francisco and Singapore. Buddy Media will also move to a new 65,000 square foot space in New York's SoHo neighborhood in February 2012.

Additional significant milestones for Buddy Media in 2011 include:

• Increased revenue by 2.5X.
• Increased monthly software licensing fees by 250% on average for the top 20 Buddy Media customers. Increased monthly software licensing fees for all Buddy Media customers by 24% on average, indicating brands and agencies are expanding to use of multiple Buddy Media products.
• Expanded user base of the Buddy Media social marketing suite to more than 91 countries.
• Named the only social marketing software company to be a ranked a "best" vendor in all categories among 41 competitors according to analyst firm Gleanster.
• Named a charter member of the developer programs for LinkedIn and Google+, making Buddy Media the only company to be named a charter partner for both these networks and Facebook.
• Expanded Buddy Media University, the largest certification program in the social software space. More than 2,600 students participated in 2011.
• Acquired social commerce and analytics company Spinback, and integrated the technology in less than four months -- ConversionBuddy gives customers the ability to tie social programs directly to sales and conversions.
• Launched a strategic partnership with comScore to help brands and agencies measure and maximize the value of their social marketing programs.
• Launched ReachBuddy, which gives customers the ability to create social content for any website or blog.

According to comScore, social networking is the most popular online activity worldwide, accounting for nearly 1 in every 5 minutes spent online globally in October 2011. As brands continue to look for ways to leverage social activity, in 2012, Buddy Media will add new features, functionality and products providing new options for customers.  In addition, Buddy Media has moved to a product release schedule of three major releases per year, in which the company will launch significant new innovations.

"Over the course of 2011, Buddy Media remained intensely focused on building, supporting and selling the best social media marketing software on the market. This intense focus is the cause of all of these massive results," said Buddy Media founder and CEO Michael Lazerow. "I'm incredibly happy with Buddy Media's product innovation and global expansion; it is the social marketing software of choice for the world's largest brands and agencies to power their connections in this new, social world. The numbers speak for themselves and I'm excited for the rest of 2012, as the best is yet to come."

The Buddy Media product suite consists of four core products:

• PROFILEBUDDY: Easily create and deploy content inside social networks.
• CONVERSATIONBUDDY: Manage two-way communications on social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
• REACHBUDDY: Use social hooks to create and deploy content across the open web.
• CONVERSIONBUDDY: Analyze how social media drives sales and conversions.

About Buddy Media

Buddy Media is the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world's top ten global advertisers, empowering them to build and maintain relationships with their consumers in a connections-based world.  The Buddy Media social marketing suite helps brands build powerful connections globally with its scalable, secure architecture and data-driven customer insights from initial point of contact through point of purchase. Buddy Media is the most award winning social enterprise software company, winning the prestigious TechCrunch "Crunchie" Award for Best Enterprise application, named to the Advertising Age 2011 "Digital A-list," and CEO and Founder Michael Lazerow was selected as 2011 New York Entrepreneur of the Year® by Ernst and Young. For more information, visit http://www.buddymedia.com. 

SOURCE Buddy Media