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Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Social media firm Mzinga closes $10M round, introduces OmniSocial
By Galen Moore
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Burlington-based Mzinga Inc. has taken in another $5 million in equity investing — its second venture capital tranche this month — and mapped out a new strategy to take on collaboration software makers like IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) by expanding its offering of white-label social network platforms throughout the enterprise.
“We’ve basically relaunched the company,” CEO Barry Libert said.
Mzinga’s products are used to host online communities and track discussion there. With a new product line called OmniSocial, the company plans to extend that capability to discussions run on collaborative applications and intranet portals.
Designed to allow businesses to create and manage collaborative applications, widgets and sites, the OmniSocial software will focus on marketing, human resources and customer support areas of business. It will include core functions of collaborative suites like IBM’s Lotus or Microsoft’s Outlook, such as calendars, file sharing, web conferencing and employee profiles.
OmniSocial will also be compatible with existing applications such as customer relationship management (CRM), Libert said.
“Despite the financial correction... the enterprise market is really blossoming,” he said. “Big businesses are recognizing the power of a single solution: a total solution to manage all their social media interactions.”
The new financing, which brings the company’s venture-funding tally for the month of September to $10 million, will be used to pay down some of Mzinga’s debt and improve its cash position, Libert said. It is an add-on to a $5 million extension disclosed earlier this month, which was to be used for nine hires to its sales and marketing divisions, increasing the company head count to around 180.
New York-based Acadia Woods Partners came in as a new investor on the round, joining existing backers W Capital Partners and BlueCrest Partners, who returned to participate in the round extension.
The tranche of new funding brings Mzinga’s total investment to at least $42.5 million.
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