Palo Alto, CA  - November 25, 2008 - With 80% of internet users sharing web content through e-mail, publishers are always looking for web tools that increase engagement and leverage their reader’s own social networks to drive traffic.

Enter Grouptivity, an innovative web developer with a viral share to social network tool that Techweb’s InformationWeek.com is piloting.  With the new and improved “email a friend” and social bookmarking functions, users can instantly e-mail articles with their social networks, post content directly to popular social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and revisit content they’ve shared in their personal “MyShares”  box which automatically saves everything that’s sent.

Shared content that’s filtered by users is a win-win for readers and publishers - people get content delivered that’s specific to their needs and interests without having to use search engines or subscribe to RSS feeds, and publishers get valuable referral traffic as well as targeted advertising opportunities.

“Users may read or browse dozens of pages but they would share typically less than 10% of those pages.  This is very valuable data since at that point in time a user has identified one piece of content above others to share. This implies more engagement and value to that user and their friend(s). Grouptivity takes that engaged user and provides more functionality for the users. Which in turn provides targeted advertising opportunities for Publishers,” said Ankesh Kumar, CEO of Grouptivity.

Michael Grover, Director of SEO Strategy for TechWeb, concurs, “Media companies today must provide users with more and better ways to engage with their products.  Grouptivity enables us to add value to the user’s engagement with our sites.”

Key to the success of the tool is its integration into established user behavior.  “Grouptivity’s power lies in the fact that we do not change users behavior, we let them use the tools and services they currently use, email or their favorite social media sites,” said Kumar.

To test out the Grouptivity function on InformationWeek, go to an InformationWeek.com story and click on the “Email this Page”icon.

For further information please contact Nicole Beattie  marketing@grouptivity.com

About Grouptivity (www.grouptivity.com)

Grouptivity provides a social environment for Publishers’ online users to share, save and socialize the interesting web content they find. This provides targeted advertising opportunities for the publisher and a more engaged user. Grouptivity embeds their Share+ widget around the Publishers content which is a conduit to the social environment. Grouptivity has over 5,000 publishers using the service. Grouptivity is a privately held company based in Palo Alto CA.

About InformationWeek Business Technology Network (http://www.informationweek.com/)

The InformationWeek Business Technology Network is a powerful network of industry-leading  and trusted  brands that provide professional business technology buyers with the information, perspective and tools they need to make optimal technology decisions; and technology marketers with high impact programs that place their solutions into buyers’ workflow as decisions are being made.  The Network, which includes industry-leading sites such as informationweek.com, bMighty.com, byteandswitch.com, darkreading.com, networkcomputing.com, internetevolution.com, plugintothecloud.com, and intelligententerprise.com, provides business technology decision-makers the news, analysis and perspective they need to make informed decisions how and when they want it, 24/7.  More than 9.63 million business technology decision-makers world-wide* actively interact and engage with InformationWeek Business Technology Network’s brands, content and services monthly.

*based on monthly connections across IWBTN brands

With 80% of internet users sharing web content through e-mail, publishers are always looking for web tools that increase engagement and leverage their reader’s own social networks to drive traffic.

Enter Grouptivity, an innovative web developer with a viral share to social network tool that Techweb’s InformationWeek.com is piloting.  With the new and improved “email a friend” and social bookmarking functions, users can instantly e-mail articles with their social networks, post content directly to popular social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and revisit content they’ve shared in their personal “MyShares” box which automatically saves everything that’s sent.

Michael Grover, Director of SEO Strategy for TechWeb, concurs, “Media companies today must provide users with more and better ways to engage with their products.  Grouptivity enables us to add value to the user’s engagement with our sites.”

Shared content that’s filtered by users is a win-win for readers and publishers - people get content delivered that’s specific to their needs and interests without having to use search engines or subscribe to RSS feeds, and publishers get valuable referral traffic as well as targeted advertising opportunities.

“Users may read or browse dozens of pages but they would share typically less than 10% of those pages.  This is very valuable data since at that point in time a user has identified one piece of content above others to share. This implies more engagement and value to that user and their friend(s). Grouptivity takes that engaged user and provides more functionality for the users. Which in turn provides targeted advertising opportunities for Publishers,” said Ankesh Kumar, CEO of Grouptivity.

Key to the success of the tool is its integration into established user behavior.  “Grouptivity’s power lies in the fact that we do not change users behavior, we let them use the tools and services they currently use, email or their favorite social media sites,” said Kumar.

To test out the Grouptivity function on InformationWeek, go to an InformationWeek.com story and click on the “Email this Page” icon.

Last week, Glam launced their application platform which allows their Publisher network to simply add new apps to their sites. Techcrunch did a nice write up, Glam Media’s Application Platform goes live.

For this release we built an OpenSocial widget and added a really cool feature, most shared from the site. I’ve attached an image to give you a preview of how it would look on a publisher’s site.

Earlier this week Chris Miller, The Social Networker wrote an interesting article on Louis Gray’s blog. Combine Friends and Google Reader for Best News Filtering.

The basic premise of the article I found intriguing since it emphasis a theme we are very fond of. Leveraging your friends work to finding interesting content. In the article Chris talks how he’s doing this with Google reader, certainly very ingenious.

The larger issue here is time, and the amount of content on the web. How does one filter content to save time in finding the interesting stuff.

We agree, leverage your friends and vice versa.

Cheers

The election’s not over yet (well one is).  If you’re experiencing post-election blues, are suffering from electoral map withdrawal symptoms, no worries, you can vote for Grouptivity!  We’re running a bi-partisan campaign to win best Social Networking Application for the 2nd Annual Open Web Awards.

Vote for us, tell your friends to vote for us, tell people you barely know to vote for us - we’re not picky!  Our campaign platform is to create the best content sharing application on the web, so you can e-mail a friend, post to your social networks, and see what your friends are sharing direct from your browser.  Free!

And we promise - no robocalls.

We’ve all done it.  Found an amazing piece of content on the web, only to bookmark and then forget what we called it.  Copy and pasted the URL in an e-mail to send a friend, then lost the trail of the discussion in our overflowing e-mail box.

While content may be king on the social web, trying to keep track of it all and sharing with friends is no easy task.  As I’m writing this article, I just remembered something a friend e-mailed me that I want to include, and now I have to scroll through all the names in my e-mail to see if I can find it (hopefully hasn’t been deleted already, or relegated to my “Old Mail” box).

Which is why I’m trying to get everyone I know to start using the new Firefox add-on from Grouptivity.

To start, let’s look at the numbers.  In a recent study conducted by social scientist and viral marketing guru Dan Zarrella, he found that 80% of the people he surveyed use e-mail as their primary method of sharing content found on the web.  Surprisingly, this was evenly distributed across the board, from what he calls “High Reach Individual Sharers” to the average user.  So while there’s an increase in content sharing in individual social networks, the primary language of shared content continues to be e-mail.

But what if you could have the best of all worlds?  E-mail a friend direct from your browser, post to your favorite social networks like Facebook, Myspace and Delicious, and save the content in a folder that you can categorize when you bookmark, or search later using keywords.

Sounds perfect.  Additional and appreciated features include the ability to upload your e-mail addresses from all your address books like AOL and Gmail, and you can receive a notification when your friend opens your e-mail (now you’ll know if they really read that low-fat curry vegan recipe).

After all, the best web search engine is your own personal network of friends.