Alphabird Acquires Leading Online Video Platform Castfire
AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT PIONEER EXPANDS SUITE OF ONLINE VIDEO PRODUCTS
San Francisco, Calif. July 19, 2012) - Alphabird (www.alphabird.com) announced that it has agreed to acquire Castfire (www.castfire.com), a leading content management and publishing platform. Castfire’s team will be joining Alphabird, delivering audio and video content solutions that provide best of breed uptime and support to its roster of customers that includes Fortune 500 publishers, international brands, and niche content creators.
"Castfire's video player and device-agnostic applications, coupled with its powerful content management system and publishing tools, complement Alphabird's end-to-end audience development platform for online video,” said Alphabird President Alex Rowland. “Web publishers will be able to take full advantage of our suite of video solutions, used by blue-chip brands like Samsung and Olympic teams such as USA Triathlon, to increase brand awareness and real-time engagement.”
"Given the critical need to align operational decisions with video strategies, now is the right time for us to combine with a strategic partner like Alphabird to deliver the first fully integrated online audience and video solution,” said Castfire CTO Christoph Khouri. “This partnership brings together a top-tier content management and distribution platform, an award-winning production unit and the most social engagement-driven video on the web.”
"Castfire is an industry leader that has played a critical role in the success of USA Triathlon’s official website, since it was re-launched last fall,” said Chuck Menke, USA Triathlon Director of Marketing and Communications. “Castfire gives us the ability to either embed videos or integrate within our own video player, thereby allowing us to utilize videos across our digital platform as needed. They also provide a web-based online library of video content easily accessible from anywhere, while instant stat tracking offers real-time analysis. Customer service has been prompt and extremely helpful regardless of how big or small the issue."
About Alphabird
Alphabird is a vertically integrated audience development company that guarantees targeted, engaged audiences for online video on a performance basis. With offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, Alphabird was an early pioneer in the distribution of Click-To-Play video content and has delivered tens of millions of engaged viewers for major studios, agencies and Fortune 1000 brands.
The Alphabird investor group is led by Joe Abrams. Abrams co-founded Intermix in 1998, the predecessor company to MySpace, which was sold to News Corp. in 2005 for $580 million. In 1983, Abrams co-founded The Software Toolworks, Inc., a publicly held developer, publisher, and distributor of educational and entertainment software, which was sold to Pearson, Plc. in 1994 for $462 million.
Alphabird (www.alphabird.com)
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