Pasadena, CA (Vocus) April 13, 2010
TweetUp, Inc., announced today a new Twitter marketplace designed to showcase the world?s best tweeters and enable them to grow a highly targeted following. TweetUp is a new patent-pending platform that combines the popularity, relevance and influence of tweets and tweeters with a bid-based marketplace. Major partners, including leading Twitter search clients and top web sites, will display the results, enabling users to easily find the best tweets and tweeters in the world.
TweetUp was founded by Bill Gross at Idealab, where he also devised the first model for paid internet search, Overture/Goto.com, over a decade ago. TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures (investor in Skype, last.fm, Myheritage and Playfish), betaworks (investor in Twitter, TweetDeck, Bit.ly), Revolution LLC (founded by Steve Case, investor in Zipcar, LivingSocial, Everyday Health), First Round Capital (investor in Mint.com, StumbleUpon, CoTweet), Jason Calacanis (founder of Mahalo) and Jeff Jarvis (founder of BuzzMachine).
?Twitter has such tremendous potential as a real-time information network far beyond what has been realized to date,? said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO of TweetUp. ?For most people, though, 80% or more of the tweets that fly by them when they?re searching for something are useless noise. For serious tweeters, the task of attracting interested and relevant followers is equally daunting. TweetUp will change all of that.?
TweetUp has addressed the needs of both users and tweeters in a single search mechanism. In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users? searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter?s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.
Danny Rimer, a partner with Index Ventures, TweetUp?s lead investor, said, ?TweetUp is an opportunity to bring real-time information to the entire Web, and to do it in a way that creates value for everyone concerned. We feel that TweetUp can dramatically improve both the utility and ubiquity of Twitter, and in doing so build a monetization mechanism for real-time search that rivals that of traditional Internet search.?
TweetUp?s search results will be available to hundreds of millions of individuals through revenue-sharing distribution agreements with leading Twitter clients, including one of the leading multi-platform clients, Seesmic, one of the leading Android clients, Twidroid, the leading source of tweets, TwitterFeed, and the leading social media authority and influence ranking system, Klout, as well as popular web sites including BusinessInsider.com, Answers.com, and PopURLs.
Together, these clients and web sites will bring TweetUp search results to more than 40 million unique users per month and serve more than half a billion impressions per month.
?Increasingly, people looking for answers want more than just black and white facts, but also real-time insights relating to the issues surrounding their questions,? said Bob Rosenschein, Answers.com CEO. ?We are at the forefront of meeting that demand, and partnering with TweetUp is an exciting new way to add value to the Answers.com user community.?
“I have been sharing in social networks and blogs for ten years and realized the power of having a true community,? said Loic Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic. ?This is why I was immediately attracted to working with Tweetup. People who are serious about sharing and having a community around themselves are also often those who have the most interesting ideas to contribute.”
?We believe that the impact of the real-time web, and of Twitter in particular, has only just begun,? explains John Borthwick of betaworks, a major investor in TweetUp as well as in TweetDeck and Bit.ly. ?Because TweetUp will be accessed on mainstream websites across the world, Twitter will be introduced to hundreds of millions of new people. Furthermore, these new users will experience thoughtful tweets, in context, targeted to them according to their areas of interest, and delivered from serious tweeters who care about building a passionate audience.?
?When we created AOL 25 years ago, we believed in the power of community and built a significant company around it,” said Steve Case, AOL co-founder and founder of Revolution LLC. “Twitter is proving the power of community continues to thrive, and I am excited to be backing Bill Gross and TweetUp as they innovate in the social media space by making Twitter more useful to a mainstream audience.”
With today?s announcement, TweetUp launches a public beta period in which tweeters can open an account and begin adding search keywords to their profile. For the first 1000 who sign up, the company is providing a $ 100 in credits to allow tweeters to see how TweetUp?s network can improve their standing in search results and attract more followers.
About TweetUp
TweetUp (http://www.tweetup.com) is a product of Idealab (http://www.idealab.com), where Bill Gross also devised the first model for paid internet search, Overture/Goto.com, over a decade ago. Then, like now, the goal was creating a business model that would both improve the relevance of search results and enable a steady revenue stream for publishers. Today, the amount of noise in the Twitter feed is crying out for a similar solution, and TweetUp was formed to provide it.
Press Contact:
Stephan West
Idealab for TweetUp
(626) 685-4934
stephan(at)idealab(dot)com
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