Social Bookmarks Pay Off in Big Data Markets
Free social bookmarking service AddToAny just turned a profit – right before it’s having its 5th anniversary this week (same age as Twitter!). The AddToAny button is one of the most-used widgets on the web – and the most distributed one from a bootstrapped start-up. It handles over a billion widget loads and millions of shares a month from over 90 million visitors, but the start-up is probably not taking its outlook as seriously as other emerging start-ups (financially, in AddToAny’s case.)
“Founder Pat Diven II says he has never felt the need to raise outside funding, although he reckons it might be fairly easy to secure financing if he wanted to. That said, he started AddToAny as a side project and, going forward, wants to keep things simple and stable first and foremost.”
This strategy has evidently paid off for the start-up, which competes with some of the biggest venture-backed social bookmarking companies on the web. According to Diven, there have even been multiple serious buy-out offers throughout AddToAny’s 5-year existence – all of them turned down. These decisions seem to have paid off as well– after all, AddToAny have a very bright outlook selling big data.
The start-up, as well as its competitors, which include the recently funded StumbleUpon and Reddit (who surprisingly doubled its programming team a short while ago), make money by selling anonymous shares of big data. This helps advertisers to optimize and increase the relevancy of their ads, and Clearspring’s AddThis is also a member of this club, all geared up for 2011. Using metrics to assess market conditions and optimize ad campaigns is one space featuring lot of demand, and consultation firm Deloitte even included it in its study as one of the top 10 trends CIOs should address this year.
A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:
Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities.
- 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more
- 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network
Are you an AWS customer? Support SiliconANGLE financially by buying your AWS services from our Marketplace portal page and links: https://siliconangle.com/aws-marketplace/
About SiliconANGLE Media
SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI.
Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.
