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November 13, 2008
McLEAN, VA – Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI) has acquired Ripple6, Inc., a leading provider of social media services. Ripple6 will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Gannett and will continue to offer its best of breed social media technology and analytics not only to Gannett but also to an array of top tier marketers and Web publishers. Terms were not disclosed.
“From the moment we began working with Ripple6, we realized we had found a company that is richly innovative and can change the way social media is offered and monetized online,” said Craig Dubow, chairman, president and CEO of Gannett. “Ripple6 will join our other enterprises in fueling the rapid growth of our digital business, which seeks to apply innovative technology and content solutions to the needs of all our customers. With the Ripple6 platform, we can help users create communities and connect with their friends and family in highly pleasing ways, while providing marketers with innovative advertising opportunities and measurable results.”
Ripple6 currently powers Gannett’s MomsLikeMe.com sites, which recently rolled out in 80 local markets across the country and have more than one million moms visiting each month. The company also powers social media properties for Procter & Gamble and the soon to be launched MixingBowl.com, Meredith Corporation’s social network around meals and meal planning. Ripple6 will continue to offer its solutions to third party publishers independent of Gannett.
“We’re excited, because we get the best of both worlds here,” said Sang Kim, CEO of Ripple6. “We’ll take advantage of the synergy and resources of our new parent, yet we’ll maintain the independence that helps generate innovative solutions for marketers and publishers.”
Using the Ripple6 platform, publishers can offer their users advanced social networking capabilities, while generating incremental revenue through Ripple6’s proprietary social marketing innovations. Ripple Analytics will also help publishers better understand how their users interact within social networks by offering a true word of mouth measurement and mapping capability.
Ripple6 also offers unique opportunities to advertisers and marketers. Among their innovations are offerings that make it possible for marketers to effectively engage in online social networks. Cloud Communities™ enable marketers to participate in their customers’ existing social networks by creating and syndicating communities across the web. With Social Insights™, marketers can conduct ongoing research within the private spaces of social networks. Both solutions include Ripple Analytics for access to metrics and insights beyond page views and visitors, while still protecting the privacy of the individuals interacting with the platform.
“We’ve had a highly productive relationship with Ripple6, and we look forward to continuing it in their new structure,” said Pat Gentile, head of Procter & Gamble Productions, Inc. “We’ve been impressed by their innovations in social marketing and the insights that they can deliver for marketers.”
As part of the transaction, the 10 percent share of Ripple6 owned by Chris Saridakis, senior vice president and chief digital officer of Gannett, was bought out completely by Gannett. He did not participate in the sale negotiations.
About Gannett
Gannett Co., Inc. is a leading international news and information company that publishes 85 daily newspapers in the USA, including USA TODAY, the nation’s largest-selling daily newspaper. The company also owns nearly 900 non-daily publications in the USA and USA WEEKEND, a weekly newspaper magazine. Gannett subsidiary Newsquest is the United Kingdom’s second largest regional newspaper company. Newsquest publishes 17 daily paid-for titles, approximately 300 weekly newspapers, magazines and trade publications, and a network of award-winning Web sites. Gannett also operates 23 television stations in the United States and is an Internet leader with sites sponsored by its TV stations and newspapers including USATODAY.com, one of the most popular news sites on the Web.
About Ripple6, Inc.
Ripple6™ helps marketers and publishers implement their business strategy through social media. The company provides an enterprise white label social media platform to create consumer engagements and relationships, enable social marketing, generate consumer insights, and facilitate commerce and collaboration. It is easily customized to incorporate a brand’s look and feel for integration into an existing web site or to create an entirely new site. Ripple6 is based in New York and its list of clients and partners includes Procter & Gamble, Gannett Co., Meredith Corporation, and General Mills. For more information, visit www.ripple6.com.
Media inquiries:
Tara Connell
Vice president of Corporate Communications
703-854-6049
Rich Ullman
Ripple6, Inc.
SVP, Marketing
646-254-6787
Social Insights™ enables marketers to tap into existing social networks for digital ethnographies.
October 28, 2008
New York, New York – October 28, 2008. Ripple6, www.ripple6.com, a leading provider of social media services to enterprise class marketers and web publishers, announced today the launch of Ripple6 Social Insights™, the first service that enables marketers to tap into online communities for consumer insights and conduct ongoing research within existing social networks.
With Social Insights, a company establishes a space that’s available across multiple community sites. Members of these sites are recruited to the space, where there are multiple levels of interaction and insight potential. Added learning is enabled by an overlay with Ripple Analytics, the industry’s only embedded word-of-mouth analytics tool.
“Marketers are searching for a better way to gather consumer insights,” said Sang Kim, Ripple6 CEO. “Social networks create tremendous opportunities and we’re inviting marketers into them. This service is at the forefront of a transformation in research, from artificial settings to more natural and authentic environments presented by online communities.”
Each implementation of the program allows researchers and members to communicate in a private setting that’s integrated with the member’s social network. They can post and comment upon messages, photos and video, as well as with one-to-one private messages. In addition, a separate “Observation Room” is created for the research team to privately share opinions and suggest deeper probes for the moderator.
“This is a smaller, faster, and nimbler research model than the community interaction methods otherwise available today,” said Ned Hickok, President and Founder of N3 Research & Consulting. “It expedites the functions of a focus group and then extends their benefits by drawing on groups in their ordinary surroundings and using the technology to generate a deep understanding of what they’re saying and doing.”
Social Insights is a component of Ripple6’s enterprise social media platform, a set of solutions that help companies implement their business strategy in social media. The software utilizes the company’s patent-pending Ripple technology to develop consumer engagements and relationships, deploy social marketing and generate consumer insights.
Social Insights programs run for a minimum of one month, but can run much longer. The pilot program is available now, including the company’s MomJunction.com property and it taps into all of Gannett’s 80 local MomsLikeMe.com properties. For more information, visit www.ripple6.com.
About Ripple6, Inc.
Ripple6™ helps companies implement their business strategy through social media. The company provides an enterprise white label social media platform to create consumer engagements and relationships, enable social marketing, generate consumer insights, and facilitate commerce and collaboration. It is easily customized to incorporate a brand’s look and feel for integration into an existing web site or to create an entirely new site. Ripple6 is based in New York and its list of partners includes Gannett Co., Meredith Corporation, and Procter & Gamble. For more information, visit www.ripple6.com.
Contact:
Rich Ullman
Ripple6, Inc.
646-254-6787
[back to news]
August 25, 2008
New York, New York – August 25, 2008 – Ripple6, www.ripple6.com, a leading provider of social media services to enterprise class marketers and web publishers, announced today that Sahara Media Inc.’s publication www.honeymag.com, the popular multicultural magazine for young women, has selected Ripple6 to create a fully interactive community. This community combines Honey Magazine’s content with active participation by its readers. The website is anchored by Honey’s wide range of stories covering fashion, beauty and lifestyle, videos and a Career Center. Honeymag.com also provides the opportunity to follow the lives of more than 35 Bloggers in eight countries.
Working with Dogmatic www.dogmatic.com Honey’s creative production services agency, Ripple6 will apply its white label social media platform to enable Honey’s audience to create profiles, blogs, groups, calendars, upload photos and more while surrounded with the energy and enthusiasm of Honey editors and contributors.
The Ripple6 platform integrates social media tools, a content management system, and social marketing features with the industry’s only embedded word-of-mouth analytics tools. Ripple Analytics, which offers real-time measurement and insight , delivers a thorough set of data points on who’s interacting with content, what they’re saying, and if they’re sharing it with friends. Beyond page views and visitors, it measures the engagement, demographics and semantics of a community and its conversations.
Sang Kim, Founder and CEO of Ripple6 said, “Working with Sahara Media is a great illustration of how the Ripple6 platform is changing the media landscape, transforming the way publishers and marketers interact with their audience. We believe that Sahara Media will enjoy the richness and depth that comes with establishing a social network for its readers and for Honey magazines advertisers, they will have a fresh set of insights to realize that Honey magazine is a robust and rewarding destination to place its marketing dollars.”
Philmore Anderson, Founder and CEO of Sahara Media Inc. said “Our partners offer the most robust technology platform in the market space that will allow our readers a unique social network experience that up until now has gone unserved.”
About Ripple6, Inc.
Ripple6™ offers a white label social media platform that allows publishers and marketers to integrate social media, content publishing, ad serving and social marketing with the industry’s only embedded word-of-mouth analytics tools. Ripple6’s technology provides publishers for the first time with the ability to measure the flow of content and messages across communities on the Internet, and gives consumers control to create and move their own messages from group to group. Ripple6’s complete social media software solution is easily customized to incorporate a brand’s look and feel for either integration into an existing web site or to create a brand new site. For more information, visit www.ripple6.com.
About Sahara Media, Inc.
Located in New York City, Sahara Media, Inc. purchased Honey Magazine from Vanguard Media in 2005 after six successful years of newsstand growth amongst the 18-34 female multi-cultural market.
To date, Honey is the largest selling magazine in the 18-34 African American female demographic, having reached a readership of 1.5 million through Honey’s loyal consumer base, brand awareness, foundation of advertisers, and proven editorial formula.
Honey was the first magazine to feature the largest array of multi-cultural female cover models from Beyonce, Tyra Banks, Jennifer Lopez, Pink, Mary J. Blige, Lauren Hill, Gabrielle Union, Jada Pinkett Smith, Lil Kim, Boris Kodjoe and LL Cool J to Lisa Left Eye Lopez and Aaliyah.
Sahara Media Inc.’s mission is to be a leader in supporting multi-cultural based platforms which feature diverse lifestyle resources and career opportunities for the growing market. Honeymag.com is a member of several professional organizations, including NABFEME (National Association of Black Females Executives in Music and Entertainment), WEEN (Women Entertainment Empowerment Network) and NAMIC (National Association of Minorities in Communications). For more information, visit www.honeymag.com/contactus.php
Brand Blogs Enable Marketers to Create, Manage and Measure One Conversation Across the Web
August 14, 2008
New York, New York August 14, 2008. Ripple6, a leading provider of social media services to enterprise class marketers and web publishers, announced today the launch of its Syndicated Brand Blogs service, an evolution of RSS which offers marketers a new avenue to interact with their audiences across the Internet.
The Syndicated Brand Blog service lets marketers create their blog and manage content, distribution and analytics from one site. Consumers then interact with it from wherever they are in the network, without having to leave and visit another site. Regardless of where they interact with the blog, every member is able to see all comments in the blog and interact with all members of the brand community.
Offering real-time measurement and insight through Ripple Analytics, the platform measures word of mouth and customer interactions. Marketers receive a thorough set of data points on who’s interacting with their brand, what they’re saying, and if they’re sharing it with friends. Beyond page views and visitors, Ripple Analytics provides real-time insight to the engagement and demographics of a marketer’s audience and semantic measures of the conversation.
Sang Kim, Founder and CEO of Ripple6 said, “For the first time, marketers will have the ability to create a single conversation with their relevant consumers in many different communities. And they can create, manage, and measure that dialogue all in one place.”
The service creates a simple interface for brand marketers to develop and manage their content into a single blog that can appear in hundreds of communities across the Web, including MomJunction.com or Gannett’s robust network of local moms sites.
The Gannett moms sites, which together attract close to 1 million moms, will be moving to the Ripple6 platform in the coming weeks as Gannett creates a nationwide network of local moms communities. Instead of creating a traditional corporate blog and promoting it or waiting for customers to come visit, Ripple6′s new service syndicates those messages across the web to users in the communities where they regularly visit, engage and communicate.
Ripple6 and Gannett are offering a pilot program to select marketers that will launch on sites fourth quarter. The program includes a combination of social media tools, community syndication, ad impressions and access to Ripple Analytics insights.
“We think this is a tremendous way for brands to begin building open relationships with consumers in social media,” said Josh Resnik, Vice President of Strategy and Business Operations for Gannett Digital. “Now users of the Gannett moms sites will have the opportunity to develop a relationship with their brands their way — by getting valuable information and savings from brands, community opinions, tips on the products, providing their feedback and opinions to the brands, plus much more – all within the local communities where moms come to connect with each other.”
Recent research indicates that consumers are looking for more relevant messages from marketers. Deloitte’s second annual “State of the Media Democracy” study found that 66% of US Internet users said they would click on more Internet ads if they were better targeted and 67% would be willing to accept more messages in exchange for free and valuable content.”
Mr. Kim continued, “Marketers will now be able to reach consumers where they’re already talking to each other and integrate their messages into a social context. This will create not just interactions with the brand, but build informative dialogue with and among relevant customers of the brand.”
For more information on Ripple6, please visit www.ripple6.com
About Ripple6, Inc.
Ripple6™ offers a white label social media platform that allows publishers and marketers to integrate social media, content publishing, ad serving and social marketing with the industry’s only embedded word-of-mouth analytics tools. Ripple6’s technology provides publishers for the first time with the ability to measure the flow of content and messages across communities on the Internet, and gives consumers control to create and move their own messages from group to group. Ripple6’s complete social media software solution is easily customized to incorporate a brand’s look and feel for either integration into an existing web site or to create a brand new site. For more information, visit www.ripple6.com.
May 27, 2008
Ripple6, which offers social media services to enterprise class web publishers and marketers, hosted a full day summit meeting last week to facilitate interaction between its partners in the consummate social media exercise – sharing learning and building collaboration opportunities.
The meeting brought together innovators and digital leaders from Gannett, Meredith, Verizon FiOS, Procter & Gamble and others to share some of their latest achievements in social media marketing, and to begin work on new forms of collaboration powered by the Ripple6 platform. The platform integrates social media tools, a content management system, and social marketing features with the industry’s only embedded word-of-mouth analytics tools.
“We’re creating social media services that deliver beyond the traditional tools like commenting and user profiles,” said Sang Kim, CEO and founder of Ripple6. “These services discover and facilitate relevant relationships for members and the sharing of information through these relationships.”
Gannett, for example, is using the Ripple6 platform to power Make the Charts, a series of hyper-local sites that support local independent bands. Meredith Interactive is developing first social network for user recipe-sharing to create the ultimate social cookbook.
“Our platform also enables our clients to syndicate micro-communities across sites,” said Kim. “It lets them partner instead of reinventing, and creates a win-win relationship. This is especially powerful for marketers who want to build relationships with consumers in a scalable way across the web.”
After a preview of several new features targeted for launch this summer, more than two dozen attendees were matched in several rounds of “speed dates” –- short meetings aimed to uncover innovation and integration opportunities. Deeper dives into partnerships and innovation will be further facilitated by a private social network established by Ripple6 for its partners.
“This was a wonderful opportunity to share social media experiences and strategies with companies like P&G, Meredith and Verizon,” said Jennifer Carroll, VP Digital Content at Gannett. “We look forward to the collaboration opportunities enabled by the new Ripple6 community syndication platform.”
About Ripple6, Inc.
Ripple6 provides social media services to enterprise class web publishers and marketers, including Gannett, Meredith, and Procter & Gamble. The Ripple6 social media platform helps them to create web sites and services that utilize social tools to provide distinct and meaningful benefits for consumers. The platform integrates social media tools, a content management system, and social media marketing features with the industry’s only embedded word-of-mouth analytics tools. It is easily customized to incorporate a brand’s look and feel for integration into an existing web site or to create a brand new site. For more information, visit www.ripple6.com
