TextDigger Augments Federated Media’s Technology Platform With Semantic Solutions for Content Tagging, Topic Extraction, and SEO
SAN FRANCISCO – Federated Media Publishing (FM), a next-generation media company, announced the acquisition of a platform for semantic and linguistic profiling of web-based content from TextDigger, a San Jose-based semantic search startup.
“We’re proud to place TextDigger’s semantic profiling technology in FM’s hands,” said Tim Musgrove, founder and CEO of TextDigger. “I’ve followed FM’s growth over the last few years and admire the company’s work. They have amassed a great team and a solid technology platform. I’m happy that our IP and our people will be integrated into such a wonderful company. This is a great strategic fit for all sides involved.”
Coming quickly on the heels of FM’s 5-year anniversary, the acquisition is emblematic of the company’s commitment to enhancing its proprietary technology platform. FM provides a full suite of media and marketing services for brand advertisers that depends heavily on a proprietary media and marketing technology platform.
TextDigger’s technology complements FM’s platform with a robust set of semantic solutions for content tagging, filtering and clustering, as well as related tools that simultaneously enhance the user experience, ad targeting, and semantic search engine optimization for a site or network of sites. The addition of TextDigger’s technology will bolster FM’s custom publishing and sponsorship capabilities for brand advertisers.
The acquisition is one major piece of FM’s ambitious technology plans. The company recently hired Chief Product Officer, Amy Yeh, to head up a growing technology team and platform roadmap. Tim Musgrove, TextDigger’s founder, will join FM as Chief Scientist, while retaining an affiliation with TextDigger as their Senior Research Fellow. Also joining FM will be Robin Hiroko Walsh, VP Engineering, Peter Ridge, Sr. Director of Product Management, and Jim Hull, Lead Software Engineer.
TextDigger will continue its search business, with Bob Perreault, the company’s Chief Business Development Officer, moving into the role of CEO. All of TextDigger’s customers will continue to be supported by either FM or TextDigger, depending on their type of project or service.
Founded in 2005, FM has grown to 120 employees in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. The next-generation media company is one of the top 50 Web properties according to comScore, and a top 5 social media property. In addition to its roots in technology publishing, FM now boasts robust media offerings in Business, Style, Food and Parenting categories, and has developed strong relationships with the world’s largest brand advertisers.
“FM’s home-grown technology platform is largely an untold story,” said John Battelle, founder, chairman and CEO. “Over the past five years, our technology team has built an extraordinary platform that drives our business and keeps us on the edge of innovation in media. TextDigger provides us with a complementary technology that will build upon the work our team began back in 2005. Expect to hear more from FM with regard to media and marketing technology solutions.”
TextDigger began in 2005 when a group of executives and senior engineers of CNET Networks first incubated, then later spun out a platform for semantic search and related services. TextDigger’s unique approach enables owners of large content collections to easily add semantics on top of any existing keyword search engine, enjoying smarter search results with minimal cost.
About Federated Media
Federated Media (FM) is a next-generation media company that connects the world’s largest brand advertisers with the Internet’s most innovative media brands and platforms. With a unique combination of premium content, influential audiences, and advanced advertising capabilities, FM harnesses a native understanding of the social and real-time Web to create media, marketing and digital solutions that engage influential audiences in an authentic way. Learn more at www.federatedmedia.net.
About TextDigger
TextDigger is a venture capital-backed, Silicon Valley start-up developing both horizontal and vertical semantic search solutions. TextDigger’s tools make Web pages more findable, both to outside search engines and to site visitors, via better search results and related search suggestions. The result is increased revenue from higher inbound traffic and longer sessions. TextDigger was founded in 2005 by a group of former CNET employees and executives who developed patented linguistic technologies that, today, are used to auto-generate thousands of natural language texts posted on CNET’s award winning websites. TextDigger’s offerings are available at www.textdigger.com.
