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Archive for 2008

Tracy McGrady Mobilizes Fans with Online Engagement Marketing Campaign

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

Looking for the best T-Mac fans in the world with user generated widgets.

San Francisco, December 18, 2008 – Today, Sprout (www.sproutinc.com), the premier platform for developing and managing creative engagement marketing campaigns, announced that announced that Tracy McGrady’s website, T-Mac.com is using Sprout Mixer to launch an online engagement campaign targeted at Tracy McGrady fans. The campaign encourages fans to create their own personalized widget to determine who is “the Ultimate T-Mac Fan.” The fan with the best widget, as selected by T-Mac himself, and the contestant with the most views on their widget, will win exclusive game-worn autographed memorabilia from Tracy.

“Tracy McGrady fans are among the most loyal in the NBA,” said Chris Talbott, director of athlete marketing, Wasserman Media Group. “Sprout Mixer allows us to invite fans to show who the most passionate and creative T-Mac fan is, while sharing their own T-Mac photos and videos. The resulting highly customizable widgets can then be posted to their profile pages for friends of fans to see and remix. It’s a great, fun way to tap into the loyalty and creativity of Tracy’s fans and their friends.”

Fans can visit http://www.t-mac.com to create their own Tracy McGrady widget. Using a simple and fun drag and drop interface and toolset, fans can use assets provided in the campaign, or their own images, videos, and more to create their own media-rich content that they can then display on their own site. Their friends, in turn, can click a Remix button on the posted widget to restyle and personalize that content.

“Allowing fans to personalize content is proving to be a very popular engagement strategy for our entertainment clients,” said Carnet Williams, CEO of Sprout. “We are thrilled that Tracy McGrady and the Wasserman Media Group have chosen our platform to engage Tracy’s fans and showcase the best T-Mac fans in the world.”

About Tracy McGrady:
Tracy McGrady is a member of the NBA’s Houston Rockets. A 7-time all-star and two-time NBA scoring leader, Tracy is one of the most well known basketball players in the world today. Tracy is also the founder of the Tracy McGrady Foundation and recently completed work on his documentary on the crisis in Darfur – 3 POINTS. For more on Tracy, please visit http://www.t-mac.com

About Sprout:
Sprout is the premier creative engagement platform used by leading advertisers, publishers and brands such as Warner Music, Sony Pictures and REI. With Sprout Mixer, brands invite consumers to participate in the creative process using simple tools to remix content, personalize applications and share their brand experiences with their friends across social networks. Sprout is based in Honolulu, HI and San Francisco, CA. To learn more, please visit http://www.sproutinc.com

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Island Def Jam Music Group Launches Online Engagement Campaign and Contest for Ludacris Fans

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

Most Creative Submission Wins a Meet and Greet with Ludacris

San Francisco, December 2, 2008 – Today, Sprout (www.sproutinc.com), the premier platform for developing and managing creative engagement marketing campaigns, announced that Island Def Jam Music Group used Sprout Mixer to develop and launch a new online engagement campaign targeted at Ludacris fans to raise awareness for his new album, Theater of the Mind.

“When developing the concept for the campaign, we wanted to allow Ludacris fans to not only experience the music and videos, but also to share their own content with their friends,” said Christian Jorg, Senior Vice President, New Media and Commerce, Island Def Jam Music Group. “We were excited by the functionality in Sprout Mixer, which allows fans to customize their own player or multimedia widget. In fact, we were so inspired by the level of engagement and room for creativity that the solution provides, that we decided to offer a meet and greet with Ludacris to reward the most creative submission.”

Fans can find information on the campaign and contest on www.myspace.com/ludacris or enter the campaign directly by visiting http://mix.sproutmixer.com/mix/3gDirgD-AJQLN90V. Using a simple and fun drag and drop interface and toolset, fans can use assets provided by Def Jam or their own images, videos and more to create their own media-rich content that they can then display on their own site. Their friends, in turn, can click a Remix button on the posted widget to restyle and personalize that content.

“We are thrilled that Island Def Jam chose to use Sprout Mixer to engage Ludacris fans,” said Carnet Williams, CEO of Sprout. “Our technology platform allows for the most creative campaigns on the Web, allowing brands to engage their consumers in a fun, innovative way that naturally leads to brand advocacy. Based on past results, we expect to see Ludacris fans spending upwards of ten minutes interacting with his photos, music and videos as they build their own Ludacris-branded widget or player,” Williams added.

About Island Def Jam Music Group:
The Island Def Jam Music Group is home to a multi-cultural and diverse family of artists and has fast become one of the most successful labels in the industry. It is comprised of Island Records and Def Jam Recordings, and is in partnerships with Disturbing Tha Peace and Slip N Slide. The roster boasts an array of talented artists including Mariah Carey, Kanye West, Fall Out Boy, The Killers, The-Dream, Melissa Etheridge, Jay-Z, LL Cool J, NAS, Bon Jovi, Ludacris, Lionel Richie, Rihanna, Hoobastank, Sum 41, Rick Ross, Young Jeezy and Ne-Yo.

About Sprout:
Sprout is the premier creative engagement platform used by leading advertisers, publishers and brands such as Warner Music, Sony Pictures and REI. With Sprout Mixer™, brands invite consumers to participate in the creative process using simple tools to remix content, personalize applications and share their brand experiences with their friends across social networks. Sprout is based in Honolulu, HI and San Francisco, CA. To learn more, please visit http://sproutinc.com.

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Sprout Debuts Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash Technology at Adobe Max

Monday, November 17th, 2008

Detailed Engagement Data now Available in Rich Applications and Widgets

San Francisco, November 17th, 2008 – Today at Adobe MAX 2008, Sprout (www.sproutinc.com), the premier platform for developing and managing creative engagement marketing campaigns, announced it has integrated Google Analytics™ Tracking for Adobe® Flash® technology into its solution built with the open source Flex framework.The integration of Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash with the Sprout Platform will allow all Sprout Mixer customers that publish rich media content to have access to one of the most robust analytics solutions in the marketplace. They will now be able to track the length of time the consumer interacted with the content, what actions were taken within the application, and detailed anonymous user demographic data.

“Brands come to Sprout to develop media-rich campaigns that capture the consumer in a totally new way,” said Carnet Williams, CEO of Sprout. “Our technology platform allows for the most engaging applications on the Web, allowing consumers to remix content provided by the brand. I am thrilled that we will be able to provide our partners with comprehensive reporting data that combines enhanced event tracking with existing page tracking, allowing partners to track activities and time within the Flash application, and whether those interactions result in the desired campaign goals,” added Williams.

“Flash provides a very rich user experience on the web, but up until now creating custom indicators to track how users are engaging with Flash content was a difficult task,” said Brett Crosby, Group Product Marketing Manager of Google Analytics. “This new native Flash tracking capability will provide the feedback loop content developers have always wanted about referring sources, geographies, campaigns and conversions.”

“We’re excited about the enhanced data now trackable around our Sprout Mixer campaigns,” said David Bell, VP of Digital Strategy at Zomba Label Group. “As a record label, we focus heavily on online engagement marketing as it’s the ultimate way to have consumers interact with our artists and their music. Being able to collect anonymous, aggregate customer data and exactly which media in the applications they are interacting with is an incredibly powerful way to measure success and learn more about our customers while safeguarding their privacy,” Bell added.

“The Sprout solution is based on the Adobe Flash Platform because Adobe Flash is the industry standard for creating and delivering interactive content that reaches the widest possible audience across the Web,” said Tom Barclay, senior product marketing manager for Flash Player at Adobe. “The pervasiveness of the Adobe Flash Platform along with Google Analytics tracking for Adobe Flash gives Sprout Mixer partners a sophisticated and safe solution for tracking how users interact with the Sprout content.”

Pricing and Availability:
All Sprout Mixer clients will receive customized reports based on campaign goals using Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash as part of their standard package. For more information on Sprout Mixer, please go to www.sproutmixer.com. For more information on the integration with Google Tracking for Adobe Flash please go to www.sproutmixer.com/analytics.

About Sprout:
Sprout is the premier creative engagement platform used by leading advertisers, publishers and brands such as Warner Music, Sony Pictures and REI. With Sprout Mixer™, brands invite consumers to participate in the creative process using simple tools to remix content, personalize applications and share their brand experiences with their friends across social networks. Sprout is based in Honolulu, HI and San Francisco, CA. To learn more, please visit http://www.sproutinc.com
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Track Those Users: Sprout Puts Google Analytics Into Flash Tool

Monday, November 17th, 2008

techcrunch2

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Sprout Raises $5 Million Series B

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

Sprout closes $5 million series B led by Polaris Venture Partners

San Francisco – May 13, 2008 – Sprout, the premier platform for easily creating, publishing and managing rich media Web content, has closed a $5 million Series B financing led by Polaris Venture Partners. Mike Hirshland, general partner at Polaris, has joined Sprout’s board of directors. Existing investor Global Venture Capital (gvc) and legendary entrepreneur Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation and designer of Lotus 1-2-3, also participated in the round.

Sprout is a free Web-based authoring platform that enables anyone to quickly and easily build widgets, mashups, mini-sites, banners and other forms of interactive and distributable web content. Users create “sprouts” by dragging and dropping rich media such as video, audio, images, text, shapes, and interactive services such as Twitter, Ribbit, PollDaddy and more. Sprouts can be embedded onto any Web site, blog, or social networking profile, and updates to the sprout are instantly reflected in all copies in circulation. Sprout’s customers range from individuals, organizations, and business small and large, including major record labels such as Universal Music Canada.

“While Flash content is ubiquitous on the Web, the process of creating and distributing Flash content was time consuming and required specialized skills. And integrating Flash with third party Web services and components has been near impossible. With Sprout, anyone can quickly create rich, Flash-based content that incorporates advanced components and Web services, and distribute them on the Web,” said Carnet Williams, co-founder and CEO, Sprout. A video interview with Sprout’s co-founder and CEO, Carnet Williams is available at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=dL33PSV-ioc.

“We’ve been on the widget bandwagon for some time now, and are thrilled to have found a team in the space to back,” noted Mike Hirshland, in a blog post ‘Why Polaris is Backing Sprout.’ “The web’s basic building block is shifting from websites to embeddable, portable chunks of content – widgets, gadgets, whatever you want to call them. Sprout has quickly established itself as the early leader for creating, launching and managing this fast-emerging content format, much like our portfolio company Allaire did with website creation a decade ago, and we think Sprout has a similar opportunity to build tremendous value.”

About Sprout

Sprout is the premier platform for easily creating, publishing and managing sophisticated rich media content on the Web. With Sprout, anyone can quickly and easily build widgets, minisites, banners and other rich media content for their blog, social networking profile or web site. Sprout is based in San Francisco, CA, and Honolulu, HI. To learn more, please visit http://www.sproutbuilder.com.

About Polaris Venture Partners

A national venture capital firm with over $3 billion under management, Polaris invests in seed, early stage and growth equity businesses in the technology, life science, digital media, enertech and consumer sectors. Other digital media investments in Polaris’ portfolio include Automattic/Wordpress, BlackArrow, Heavy, JibJab Media, Quantcast and Turbine Entertainment.

Through a philosophy of lead investing and active, long-term partnering with entrepreneurs and management teams, Polaris has helped many companies achieve outstanding success. Among them are: Accordant Health Services, Acusphere, Advanced Inhalation Research (AIR), Akamai Technologies, Allaire Corporation, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, American Superconductor, Archivas, Aspect Medical Systems, Avici Systems, Centra Software, Classifieds2000, Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Cushcraft Corporation, deCODE genetics, Exchange.com, GlycoFi, Matrics, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Paradigm Genetics, Powersoft, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Solidworks, and TransForm Pharmaceuticals.

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Sprout Unveils SDK

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008

Web services can give their users the ability to ‘mashup’ with rich media content.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 23 /PRNewswire/ — Web 2.0 EXPO BOOTH 545 –
Sprout (http://www.sproutbuilder.com), the premier platform for easily creating, publishing and managing rich Flash content, including widgets, minisites, banners and more, today launched a Software Development Kit (SDK) allowing third parties to integrate their applications with Sprout.

Web services and developers that integrate their services with Sprout benefit by introducing their service to Sprout’s growing user base, and by empowering their existing users to mashup their service within Sprout for distribution across any number of web sites. The Sprout SDK has universal appeal as it uses XML and JavaScript, making integration easy and giving users full control over the editing of custom properties.

Also announced today, Sprout v1.5 includes components for Google Forms, PollDaddy, Ribbit, Seesmic and Twitter, making it easy to collect data, survey audiences, place phone calls, or show off vlogs or Twitters directly from a sprout. Also released were several new animation effects, a new ‘Help’ panel with tutorials and ‘how-to’ videos, and an enhanced Undo/Redo/History function.

“The Sprout SDK allows all types of web services to easily integrate into our platform, joining the likes of Twitter, PollDaddy, Google, Yahoo! and others,” said Carnet Williams, CEO of Sprout. “We look forward to working with additional partners on the Sprout platform.”

The Sprout SDK provides developers with a wide range of property types and editors like number spinners, date and color/font selectors for manipulating and customizing components. Users can define custom property types and associate them with custom editors, and Sprout records when custom components are initialized, activated, selected and removed.

Components can alert the builder and other components using a topic-based event bus. For example, a news widget can publish “new article” events incorporating a sound widget. When a new article arrives, the sound widget produces a bell sound. Different versions of the same component can be created with simultaneous hosting.

About Sprout

Sprout is the first online platform for easily creating, publishing and managing sophisticated Flash content on the Web. With Sprout, anyone can quickly and easily build widgets, minisites, banners and other rich media content for their blog, social networking profile or web site. Sprout is based in San Francisco, CA, and Honolulu, HI. To learn more, please visit http://www.sproutbuilder.com

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Sprout Introduces Sprout Builder

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

Innovative Web service allows anyone to quickly and easily to build sophisticated multimedia Web content

PRNewswire
PALM DESERT, Calif.

January 31 /PRNewswire/ — At the DEMO ‘08 conference, Sprout unveiled Sprout Builder, an authoring platform that allows anyone to quickly and easily build “Living Content” – widgets, mashups, mini-sites, and other forms of interactive and distributable web content.

Users create content (“sprouts”) by dragging and dropping rich media such as video, audio, images, text, shapes, and interactive services such as chat (Meebo), phone (Ribbit), fundraising (ChipIn), surveys (PollDaddy), and more. The resulting Flash file can be embedded onto any Web site, blog, or social networking profile or published via widget platforms such as Gigya, Clearspring and SpringWidgets.

The Sprout team demonstrated the power of its Sprout Builder onstage at DEMO ‘08, building a sprout live and in less than five minutes for the band Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals. The sprout, which included video, a jukebox, calendar, and RSS feed, will be embedded on the band’s Web site (www.benharper.net) and MySpace profile, where it can be copied and shared by their fans, allowing the band to reach new audiences and keep their fans constantly updated with the latest news, tour dates, song releases, and more.

“Sprout is bringing sophisticated content creation to the masses,” says Chris Shipley, executive producer of the DEMO conferences. “Not only have they made Flash development simple and easy, but they also are integrating their authoring platform with leading Web content and distribution services in a very powerful way.”

“We’re rapidly expanding our content and distribution partner offerings and constantly adding templates and wizards to make Sprout Builder both more powerful and easy to use,” says Sprout CEO Carnet Williams. “Our vision is to redefine the way social media and even the Web itself is built by creating an authoring platform that anyone can use for any purpose. In fact, we’ve built a good chunk of our Web site using Sprout.”

Sprout is a free service and is currently in beta testing. Those interested in learning more or becoming a beta user should visit www.sproutbuilder.com.

About Sprout

Headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii, Sprout is the premier authoring platform for quickly and easily building Living Content™. For more information, visit www.sproutbuilder.com.

About DEMO

Produced by Network World Events and Executive Forums, the semi-annual DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow’s cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products, and technologies. For more information, visit www.demo.com

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