SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA–PeopleLink, Inc., the leading provider of complete outsourced community solutions for the Internet, has signed several strategic partnership agreements, including Escalate, the leading ecommerce service provider for Internet selling; iSyndicate, the leading provider of syndicated web content; USAGreetings.com, the leading provider of online greeting cards; and Kamoon, a leading infrastructure software company providing an online knowledge commerce solution for businesses.
“We have found that users want to talk about content they see online,” said Steve Glenn, founder and CEO of PeopleLink. “These partnerships will leverage both our partners’ strengths, which deliver content and commerce services, and our strength, which is providing community services that allow people to communicate about the content and commerce that draw them to sites.”
Under the terms of PeopleLink’s co-marketing agreements, PeopleLink will be partnering with the four firms to leverage each company’s core competencies to rapidly build and manage online communities that are strategic business assets for corporations.
“We are excited to be working with a technology leader such as PeopleLink,” said Keng Lim, president and CEO of Escalate. “We have found that consumers are more likely to buy from recognizable brands and that to create successful and profitable online sales operations, it takes strong brands, supported by cost-effective and robust ecommerce solutions. Our partnership with PeopleLink will help draw community users to our clients’ branded ecommerce sites, thus offering them the opportunity to create new customer relationships.”
Redwood Shores, California-based Escalate offers clients advisory services in online retail planning, merchandising, warehouse logistics and operations. Escalate is privately held, with over 200 employees.
iSyndicate aggregates, packages, integrates and delivers audio, video, animations, interactive games, comics and weather from more than 1,000 trusted sources, including the Associated Press, CBS SportsLine, CNBC, CNET, Reuters, Rolling Stone and Salon.com, all in real time. iSyndicate is based in San Francisco and is backed by Scripps Ventures, Labrador Ventures, investment bank Chase Hambrecht & Quist, Infospace.com, Vignette Corporation, NBC, Microsoft and News Corporation.
USA Greetings.com is a leading provider of electronic greeting cards. The company lets customers send greetings in their own voices along with the greeting card. The cards are available in language- and culture-specific sites with localized content to effectively serve global markets. Customers can also create cards using their own images and messages.
Kamoon is a leading infrastructure software company that facilitates human interactions for businesses, with smart engine technology to build knowledge commerce channels. Kamoon integrates all key components of a knowledge commerce channel, including applying business processes for channel development, smart routing and matching, customer-expert interaction management, transactional bidding and billing, business intelligence, and partner management. Founded in 1999, Kamoon has received funding from the BRM Group. Kamoon is headquartered in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and Ramat Gan, Israel, where its patent-pending technology was developed.
Santa Monica-based PeopleLink was established by idealab! and is funded by AT&T Ventures; the BRM Group; Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst Incorporated; GE Equity; Goldman Sachs Group; and HarbourVest Partners, LLC. The company customizes, hosts, and maintains community-building services. These services include real-time chat, message boards, instant messaging, member directories, mailing li
sts, interest groups, the Plink Light System, community management and moderation services. PeopleLink’s clients include MTV.com, VH1.com, Times Mirror’s GOLFonline.com, the Sporting News, GTE, Snowball.com’s ChickClick and IGN.com.
