Context Optional Acquires Buzzeo, Leading Platform for Creating Facebook Applications

SAN FRANCISCO, June 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Context Optional, the social marketing company, today announced the acquisition of unwrap, inc., makers of Buzzeo, a leading platform for Facebook application creation, management and deployment. The move expands Context Optional's leadership position in providing comprehensive social marketing solutions for brands.

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The Buzzeo platform enables companies to engage customers on Facebook with a variety of easy-to-deploy applications including e-commerce virtual goods, polls and product listings, among others. The company's app platform is a natural complement to Context Optional's Social Marketing Suite, a highly customizable, feature-rich SaaS solution that integrates publishing, moderation, analytics and app-building into a single tool.

As part of the acquisition, the Buzzeo team, including co-founders Waynn Lue and Joshua Reeves, will be joining Context Optional and taking on leadership roles in product development, marketing and engineering. Buzzeo will remain a standalone product and now be offered to customers free of charge. The company has proven leadership in the space: Buzzeo has worked with companies including Ben & Jerry's and Gold's Gym on Facebook and enabled a variety of social shopping experiences for sellers on CafePress and Zazzle. In addition, over 175,000 accounts have been created on the Buzzeo platform and applications built using Buzzeo have been installed by over 41 million Facebook users.

As more and more brands dive into and expand their presences on Facebook—72% of Fortune 500 companies already have Facebook fan pages—Context Optional will be providing customers with a broader set of solutions to suit their unique social marketing needs.

Having launched its Social Marketing Suite in February 2010 and more recently its Retail Solution for brand marketers, Context Optional has been steadily expanding its software offerings, with Buzzeo as the latest addition.

"We strongly believe in the potential of Facebook as an advertising vehicle for brands and businesses. Going forward, as people spend more and more time on social networks like Facebook, we'll continue to see companies spending resources to reach their customers on the social web," said Waynn Lue.

"Context Optional is a clear leader in the space and is in a unique position to help businesses take full advantage of social platforms such as Facebook to achieve new levels of customer engagement," said Joshua Reeves. "We're excited to bring the Buzzeo team's expertise and platform to Context Optional and together continue to expand and develop the company's industry-leading suite of products."

"We're looking forward to incorporating Buzzeo's talented team and product into our company and product family," said Kevin Barenblat, CEO and co-founder, Context Optional.  "We believe that brands will continue to expand their activities on the social web, and we're looking forward to helping them get started."

To learn more about what this means for Buzzeo users, please visit: www.getbuzzeo.com

To read an open letter from Context Optional's CEO, please visit the Context Optional blog: www.contextoptional.com/news/blog

About unwrap, inc.

unwrap, inc. was founded with the goal of making Facebook more useful for businesses by connecting consumers with the products and brands they care about. unwrap, inc.'s first product is Buzzeo, an online marketing platform that empowers businesses to create, deploy and manage applications across Facebook. These applications can be used to drive leads for e-commerce, increase engagement with existing customers or to run brand marketing promotions. Using Buzzeo doesn't require any technical knowledge and there are a variety of different app frameworks for businesses to choose from, including e-commerce stores, virtual goods gifting, polls, blog syndication and more. unwrap, inc. is headquartered in Palo Alto and was co-founded by Stanford alums. For more information, please visit http://www.getbuzzeo.com.

About Context Optional  

Context Optional is the leading provider of social marketing software and services to global brands and advertising agencies.  The company provides marketers with comprehensive solutions to build, manage, monitor and measure brand presence across the social web to meet their acquisition, engagement and retention goals.  By combining industry expertise, a leading technology platform, and comprehensive analytics into an integrated approach, Context Optional delivers the most effective social CRM and marketing solutions to Fortune 500 brands and agencies.  Context Optional is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in New York.  For more information, please visit http://www.contextoptional.com.

Contact: Kasey Fleisher Hickey, +1-415-738-7997, ext. 34, kasey (at) contextoptional (dot) com

SOURCE Context Optional