Friend2Friend Expands Social Media Marketing Platform

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire - Feb 21, 2012) - Friend2Friend, a social media technology and solutions company that works with more than one hundred global brands and media agencies, today launched a major upgrade to its social media technology platform. The Friend2Friend Social Media Platform™ is a full-featured Social Media Management System (SMMS) that lets global brands and media agencies cultivate and engage social audiences.

Friend2Friend's Platform upgrade goes beyond simply creating and managing Facebook page content; it allows clients to create, manage, monitor, and measure individualized social media marketing campaigns that can be deployed across Facebook and other platforms. The newly upgraded Platform includes a wide variety of campaign types, including social commerce, social quizzes, the management of self-serve contests and sweepstakes campaigns.

The Platform incorporates Applications, Publishing, Moderation, Analytics, and Campaign Administration, and addresses the critical need for brands to stay in control of their social marketing campaign. In addition, it provides the flexibility and individualization they need to deliver a truly unique brand experience for their fans. The engagement Applications in the Platform are designed to overcome the critical challenge that brands face in their marketing efforts to really engage fans in a way that's compelling, friendly and conversational.

"This major upgrade delivers tools that support the increasingly sophisticated demands of brands in this new era of social media marketing," said Roger Katz, CEO of Friend2Friend. "We see brands demanding engagement that is systematized and scalable, but that is also focused on encouraging their most important advocates -- their social fans -- to share real and meaningful brand experiences with friends. The most socially savvy brands respect their relationship with their fans, and Friend2Friend-powered campaigns are always focused on truly socializing the brand experience, in a way that never feels forced."

With this release, the Friend2Friend Social Media Platform includes:

• Social commerce solutions empower brands to build Facebook campaigns that allow fans to consider, share, and initiate the purchase of products, all within the Facebook wall. Now, brands can build campaigns that allow product preference and interest to be socialized with friends, and then turned into a monetizable action.
• Self-serve campaign solutions to allow brands to build and manage their own ongoing sweepstakes, contests and interactive social quiz campaigns on Facebook; a sweepstakes to win a Kindle Fire, made with the Friend2Friend Platform, can be found on Friend2Friend's Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/Friend2Friend.
• Social engagement solutions to help brands motivate fans to share brand messaging across social networks using inherently viral "social actions" such as: sharing photo/videos; virtual gifting; quizzes and polls; content discovery; brand story telling; social gaming; and content voting; and more.
• Social mobile solutions: to allow brands to extend social campaigns onto smartphones and tablets;
• A back-end campaign management system that includes analytics, metrics, Facebook post-management, and campaign content moderation.

Users of the Friend2Friend's latest Platform include:

• Universal Pictures is using Friend2Friend's Social Media Platform to easily allow fans to turn a plan to go to the movies into a social experience on Facebook. With the Universal Pictures ticketing app, fans can watch and share the movie trailer, find show times, invite friends, and buy tickets, all without leaving the Facebook wall. Universal kicked off this social commerce initiative with the movie "Safe House" and plans to use the app on the upcoming film "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" and other major movie releases in 2012 and beyond. The campaign enables movie-goers preferences to be socialized within Facebook, and then turned into monetizable action.
  
  "This new social commerce initiative has given our Facebook fans an easy way to share their enthusiasm for going to the movies," said Leigh Godfrey, Director of Digital Marketing, Universal Pictures. "We saw a terrific response with 'Safe House' and fully expect the continued use of this unique tool as fans make plans to see other Universal films in 2012."
  
  
• Outside Magazine, who has paired Friend2Friend's Platform with Outside's wealth of content to power the "Outside Challenge," a daily quiz on Facebook focused on common misconceptions about fitness. Daily questions are posted to Outside's Facebook page and fans can test their knowledge, enter to win prizes, get valuable fitness tips, respond with their own thoughts, and share the question with friends all without leaving Facebook. This campaign allowed Outside to showcase their expert knowledge and content with fans in an engaging way, while relying on the Platform to take care of delivering and tabulating results.
  
  "(Our) social media campaigns add a whole new dimension in the way our fans can interact with Outside Magazine and our award winning content," said Jen Wittman, Director of Marketing, Outside Magazine. "We build multiple content-driven social campaigns throughout the year, each with a new theme, and each with the goal of pushing the envelope of social engagement. We rely on the Friend2Friend Platform to meet that goal."
  
  
• Backbone Media is a leading PR and media agency that specializes in active lifestyle brand clients. Backbone Media turned to Friend2Friend to provide an expansive technical platform that lets them create innovative social campaigns for multiple clients, including New Belgium Brewing, Polartec, and charitable endeavors such as the "Save the Colorado River" campaign.
  

"As a digital agency representing iconic active lifestyle brands, we rely on Friend2Friend as our technical partner for social," said Greg Williams, Media Director at Backbone Media. "Like Backbone Media, Friend2Friend believes passionately that social is the new 'normal' in marketing, and has built technical solutions that really encompass the needs and challenges of forward-thinking, socially savvy brands across the spectrum, from impressions to engagement to commerce."

Details about more Friend2Friend clients engagements using the Friend2Friend Social Media Platform can be found at http://www.friend2friend.com/clients/.

Visuals:

• Link to Screen Grabs of campaigns: https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/42460345/1/Press?h=52fa81

About Friend2Friend
Friend2Friend is a global social media technology and solutions provider that provides campaign management solutions that result in better engagement, community and commerce. More than one hundred leading international brands and media agencies such as Universal Pictures, Dreamworks, Volkswagen, Hyundai, HarperCollins, People's Choice Awards, REI, The North Face, Polartec, New Belgium Brewing, Bacardi, Siemens and others have chosen Friend2Friend to build engaging social media campaigns that are customized to their individual needs, and delivered with turnkey speed and reliability. The company has offices in Palo Alto, New York, and Barcelona. Learn more at www.friend2friend.com.