Lithium Technologies Makes Big Strides at LiNC 2014

SAN FRANCISCO, May 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- This year's LiNC 2014 theme is "Now" and Lithium Technologies wasted no time describing its own "now" in bold terms. Just one month after the company's acquisition of Klout, Lithium has:

• Cemented its vision around creating a Shared Value Network
• Unveiled an ambitious roadmap to deliver the first Shared Value Network for brands and consumers
• Announced the first joint products that combine Lithium and Klout: Pop-Up Communities and Klout for Products
• Launched massive new updates to the existing Lithium portfolio

The Lithium vision for a Shared Value Network brings people and brands together on the powerful Lithium SaaS platform so each can achieve mutual satisfaction and value. Consumers get a way to share feedback, ideas, and concerns with brands and each other. Brands get a way to better interact with consumers to drive increased purchase, preference, and loyalty. The Lithium Platform harnesses big data, interactions with millions of consumers, and powerful algorithms to make consumers' and brands' experiences more personal, meaningful, and actionable.

These announcements solidify Lithium's lead in online community building and pioneering new approaches to measuring trust and expertise online. They expand Lithium's brand reach to a broader universe of marketing and service executives. And they address the changing nature of consumers looking for new ways to engage with their favorite companies and brands.

Rob Tarkoff, President and CEO of Lithium, was the morning's conference highlight. He encouraged companies to act now to usher in a new era—one that brings customers in as equal partners in creating brand value and experiences. "We know from our own lives as consumers that today's customer is fundamentally changed. Our survey data released yesterday also confirms this. The result is either a massive disruption or an advantageous shift for companies tackling this new reality. Our roadmap today is all about creating a Shared Value Network to help our customers succeed in this vastly different consumer landscape."

Lithium's New Roadmap & Just Announced Integrated Lithium+Klout Products
Creating a Shared Value Network is at the heart of the company's new roadmap that integrates Klout across the Lithium portfolio. To complete this vision, having a clear measure of trust for people, products, and brands is crucial. Klout scores will be integrated into online profiles visible in Lithium communities and Lithium Social Web as an option by the end of this year. This will help community members and moderators—and others on the front lines of social response—better understand with whom they are engaging and the context of their expertise.

Lithium also unveiled two completely new products as part of the company's new joint roadmap: Advocacy "Pop-Up" Communities and Klout for Products.

• Advocacy "Pop-Up" Communities offer marketers an opportunity to create deeper engagement around a campaign, product launch, promotion, or special event. Pop-Up Communities can be established as a standalone community or adjacent to a permanent community, and incorporate Klout Perks to incent behaviors and reward loyalty, advocacy, and brand promotion. The Pop-Up Communities are designed to be relatively short-lived to drive greater immediacy and specific actions.
• Klout for Products offers consumers a universal scoring system free from site-specific or community-specific scores and reviews.

Additionally, Lithium announced a series of "action widgets" that will help marketers and digital managers develop insights on customer behavior and take action via real-time offers to encourage purchase, advocacy, or syndication.  These action widgets are designed to be integrated into companies' websites or e-commerce stores as a type of distributed Lithium community. The first action widgets include a "Want" button, a responsive wish list service, and product ratings. 

Lithium has committed to deliver these new products in the third and fourth quarters of 2014. Pricing and packaging details will be unveiled as the products ship.

Lithium Mobile Enhancements
Lithium customers will now reap the benefits of Lithium Community Mobile (v2), built on a modern UI and designed with mobile interactions at the core to support increased "on the go" consumer engagements. With these mobile enhancements, Lithium is bringing its most powerful and popular desktop capabilities to mobile platforms, while also keeping the interactions lightweight and mobile web optimized. The initial release of Lithium Community Mobile (v2) is available now and offers increased engagement for end users with best practice user experience, lowered costs and greatly expanded customization potential (relative to v1), support for image uploads, and mobile analytics within Lithium Social Intelligence (LSI).

Lithium Premium Gamification: Recognize, Reward, and Reinforce
Lithium has been a pioneer in incorporating gamification across its product portfolio. Today's new Premium Gamification package extends the company's lead with additional tools designed to create even deeper engagement for consumers and offer brands more options to drive the behaviors they desire.

Lithium Premium Gamification is natively integrated and works out of the box with existing data and community features without any additional coding or new learning tools needed. Lithium is also the only provider to offer a gamification strategy workshop to help brands scope and plan their gamification deployments.

In three short months, numerous Lithium customers have already experienced Lithium Premium Gamification with Badges. Badges help deliver greater engagement with new and occasional community members and boost user generated content and traffic. Badge data is also available within LSI. KPN, a Dutch telecommunications company, implemented Lithium Premium Gamification with Badges and has already seen an increase of 26% in onboarding activities. New members are posting more after the Badges implementation, and KPN has also seen a increased super user activity.

LiNC 2014 Partners and Sponsors
Just last week, Lithium announced it has joined the Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) Program and this week saw the company announcing a partnership with iTalent and Lithium Compliance Powered by Actiance. Additionally, the company has been tightening integration and go-to-market approaches with its LiNC sponsors this year. This year's Platinum Sponsors are Domo, Persistent Systems, and Millward Brown Digital, and this year's Gold Sponsors are Actiance, Crimson Hexagon, EMC, iTalent, LionBridge, and Perfect Sense Digital.

About Lithium Technologies
Lithium software helps the world's best brands build trusted relationships with customers. Lithium helps more than 300 iconic brands— including AT&T, Best Buy, Indosat, Sephora, Skype and Telstra — respond on social networks and build trusted content on a community they own. The 100% SaaS-based Lithium Social Customer Experience™ platform enables brands to build and engage vibrant customer communities to drive sales, reduce service costs, accelerate innovation and grow brand advocacy. On March 27 of this year, Lithium announced the acquisition of Klout. For more information, visit lithium.com, or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and our own community. Lithium is privately held with corporate headquarters in San Francisco and offices across Europe, Asia and Australia.

The Lithium® logo is a registered Service Mark of Lithium Technologies. All trademarks and product names are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Lithium