Lithium builds an online community development platform for customer-facing sites, combining web analytics and community engagement metrics to help companies identify and engage top contributors. Its data-analytics tools let customers correlate and drill down into the users who engage most deeply, monitor content performance, and view relationships to the brand in real time. The company also operates a services organization that helps customers build and integrate community features such as question-and-answer functionality. Lithium employs gamification techniques with longer reinforcement timescales to drive more lasting engagement. Customers cited in the article include AT&T, Telefonica and Home Depot. The company faces challenges around building a mature mobile platform and extending its developer community. Lithium Technologies helps brands build social networks that can be used to drive sales and marketing, inform product development, and improve customer service. The company targets corporations with large user communities and heavy product-support needs, enabling them to engage passionate fans to build brand nations. Lithium acquired Social Dynamx by issuing $5.6 million in shares; Social Dynamx’s platform monitors social activity to help large businesses stay tuned to relevant online conversations and manage customer care. Social Dynamx will become part of Lithium’s suite of solutions under the Lithium Social Web heading. Lithium closed $53.4 million in January in its fourth round of funding (Series D), with investors including Shasta Ventures, Emergence, Benchmark and New Enterprise Associates. The company said the funding was raised to expand into new verticals, expand internationally, and grow Lithium’s “digital agency ecosystem.” Lithium offers white‑label community sites, support forums, game mechanics and social ranking features to encourage quality user participation, plus analytics to help brands understand consumer needs. Its product set includes support sites, forums and analytics, and it launched a Facebook product in May to identify and promote top users. The company has made acquisitions (notably Scout Labs in 2010) and says it may move into adjacent areas such as additional Facebook page capabilities or ad‑related features. Rob Tarkoff joined as CEO about 100 days prior, having been an executive at Adobe. Financially, Lithium raised a $53.4M fourth round on top of the $39M it had previously raised. The company plans to use the new funding to double headcount from roughly 200 through hiring and acquisitions and to expand sales, marketing and product investment globally to build a lead, especially on Facebook. Lithium Technologies is an Emeryville, CA-based provider of Social Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions that enable companies to create and manage their own social customer networks. Its core product set centers on social CRM tools for customer engagement and community management. The company completed an $18M Series C equity financing to fund its next stage of growth. Backers in the round include new investors DAG Ventures and Tenaya Capital alongside existing investors Benchmark Capital, Emergence Capital and Shasta Ventures. Lithium intends to use the proceeds to support continued growth and to solidify its market position. The round follows a $12M Series B financing in June 2008 involving Benchmark, Emergence Capital and Shasta Ventures. Lithium offers on-demand solutions for enterprise communities, including social networks, forums, live chat, instant messaging and other social tools. The platform also provides APIs and an analytics solution delivered on-demand. Lithium-built communities see about 10.6 million average users per day across customers and roughly 2.2 billion messages sent per month. Named clients include PayPal, Dell, Symantec, AT&T, Playstation, and Barnes & Noble. The company says it will use new funding to expand its social media service offerings and pursue a more aggressive business development/sales push. The market is increasingly competitive, with a range of both self-install and hosted options available.

Total raised

$148M

Funding rounds

6

Latest round

Debt Financing

Latest activity

Sep 2013