Spot.IM, a social engagement platform that’s disrupting the digital publishing industry, announced today it has closed a $13 million Series A.
The round was led by Index Ventures and AltaIR Capital, with additional investments from Norma Investments Limited, M&C Saatchi Mobile CEO, James Hilton, Wix co-founder and CEO, Avishai Abrahami, Wix co-founder and CTO, Giora Kaplan, Wix President and COO, Nir Zohar, Brian Bedol and Ran Tushia.
Spot.IM was founded in 2012 by Nadav Shoval and Ishay Green with a mission to help digital media companies curate their communities’ social interactions directly. The platform encourages organic site engagement through real-time conversations, bringing chat and comment capabilities to online content. Today, the company partners with over 25 percent of the digital publishing industry — over 4,600 sites — including publications such as Time Inc., CBS Interactive, The Huffington Post, Advertising Age and Refinery 29.
The platform works like this: Spot.IM’s technology allows for publishers to foster social interactions directly on their website, creating an alternative to the organic conversations that often happen on third-party social media platforms like Facebook.
“We bring real-time technology to comments, which turn websites into organisms. By enabling people to chat on the page of an article itself, people are staying longer on the site to chat, and in turn, publishers are more engaged with the community,” said Spot.IM co-founder and CEO Nadav Shoval.
While many content creators struggle to find ways to be profitable in today’s digital media landscape, especially with ad revenues funneled to third-party social media sites, Spot.IM is hoping to solve this problem. The platform puts the value back into a publisher’s original content, encouraging direct visits to websites, as well as longer visits on the site.
“Our vision is to go beyond the comments and foster topic-based discussions,” said Shoval. “We want people to engage with specific topics by joining conversations and creating conversations, bringing a stronger identity to digital media.”
The company plans on using the financing to drive growth through new hires as well as expand its R&D efforts for the product.
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