Mass Relevance, the technology leader in social curation and integration, today announced that it has closed $3.3 million in venture capital funding. The Series A round is led by Austin Ventures and includes new investor Battery Ventures as well as existing investors Floodgate Fund, Allegro Venture Partners and Metamorphic Ventures. Mass Relevance will use the new financing to accelerate growth for the company's platform among media, entertainment, consumer brands and retailers.

The financing comes as leading brands, ranging from Madonna and MTV through Target and Purina, turn to Mass Relevance to use real-time social content to drive engagement on television, web and mobile. Fifteen months after its launch with two customers, the company now serves 120 clients and more than doubled revenue expectations in fiscal year 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. Mass Relevance clients include the "Big Four" television networks, 7 of the top 10 2011 cable networks, as well as top brands like Target, Cisco, Ford, Samsung, New York Giants, Pepsi, Purell and Victoria's Secret.

"People around the world are actively participating in social conversations about brands, media and entertainment, and this content is passing us by faster than ever before," said Sam Decker, founder and CEO of Mass Relevance. "Brands are realizing the opportunity to capture these conversations and integrate them across their marketing efforts in order to engage and activate their audiences - ultimately driving social buzz and sales for their brand. With the Mass Relevance platform brands can aggregate and filter the world's social conversations to build safe and controlled social experiences that integrate anywhere the brand lives."

In the past 9 months alone, Mass Relevance has delivered more than 3 billion pieces of social content to multiple digital surfaces (curated from over 9 billion pieces flowing through the Mass Relevance platform) to support iconic events like the Super Bowl and Academy Awards, launches such as The Avengers and Madonna MDNA, and television phenoms American Idol, X-Factor, 80 Plates and The Voice. Mass Relevance has also seen significant traction with innovative global brands, such as Pepsi who is currently using the Mass Relevance platform to bring fresh #livefornow content across the Pepsi.com homepage.

"Mass Relevance is a strategic partner who can meet the technology and creative challenges of bringing the voices of millions into our brand," said Shiv Singh, head of Digital at PepsiCo Beverages. "As a platform, they offer the scalability, functionality and reliability that we need to be successful - and the strong design sensibility to make these engagement really stand out."

"One thing we know very clearly from investing in the space: brands are fighting to manage and engage a massive fire hose of social media content, and they need help," said Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner, Battery Ventures. "Mass Relevance is the only solution for real-time curation and distribution of social media content at scale - across any device, site or channel. The team is proven, the technology is ahead of the pack by far, and they are already making an impact with some of the biggest brands and media companies in the world. The opportunity here is huge."
About Mass Relevance

Based in Austin, Texas, Mass Relevance enables entertainment, media, retail, and manufacturing brands to drive real-time engagement through social curation and integration. The company provides a flexible, robust platform to facilitate audience and consumer interactions in a relevant, moderated way that is proven to deliver measurable results. Brands using Mass Relevance include NBC Sports, Thomson Reuters, Al Jazeera MTV Networks, Cisco, Samsung, Target, Victoria's Secret, Pepsi, and Golden Globe Awards.