background preloader

Funding

Facebook Twitter

Pearltrees Raises $6.7M For Its “Collaborative Interest Graph” Pearltrees, a company offering a novel interface for sharing and finding content, has raised 5 million euros ($6.7 million US) in new funding.

Pearltrees Raises $6.7M For Its “Collaborative Interest Graph”

The basic unit of the Pearltrees service is the pearl, which is basically a bookmark. Users can assemble these pearls into trees based around a topic. Meanwhile, Pearltrees is using that data to determine how different topics and bookmarks are related, and allows users to find new pearls (related to whatever topic they’re exploring) through its “related interests” button. Following the lead from Google’s PageRank and Facebook’s EdgeRank, Pearltrees has named its technology TreeRank.

In essence, it’s offering its own version of the “interest graph”, a goal that many startups are chasing. Pearltrees launched in December 2009, and the company says it has been growing consistently at 15 percent per month, and that users have now created 15 million pearls which were assembled into 2 million trees. Previous investor Groupe Accueil led the new round. Pearltrees Gets Funding To Chase After Pinterest.

So it is not surprising that investment is pouring in, as investors themselves go gaga over the most promising firms.

Pearltrees Gets Funding To Chase After Pinterest

Just this week, Pearltrees received $6.6 million in series B funding, as part of the wave of investment in sites that bring together folks with common “interest graphs.” The site uses a clustered visual interface to organize anything that users see or read on the web. This is merely the latest example of a tectonic shift among venture capitalist and merchant bankers away from funding general social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, towards internet startups that curate user interests, which is another way of stating that these sites offer human bookmarking and organization.

More popularly known sites that similarly use bookmarking and organization include Pinterest and GetGlue. Pinterest has accumulated more than 12 million users in the US alone, and has been aggressively building its engagement worldwide. What the heck is an interest graph? Pearltrees raises $6.6M to show us. Social curation startup Pearltrees has just sealed a deal for €5 million (around $6.6 million), all in the name of creating a better interest graph.

What the heck is an interest graph? Pearltrees raises $6.6M to show us

Much is being made in current social media circles of the “interest graph” concept, which is more about what you know than who you know, and which purportedly has strong connections to purchase intent and other matters of concern to online marketers. Put differently, while social networks like Facebook focus on what you have in common with your friends and how you react to friends’ recommendations, interest graph-based models (like the ones behind Pinterest, GetGlue or Foodspotting) make social connections based on shared interests, not the other way around.

“Pearltrees has leveraged social curation to create an open and collaborative interest graph of the Web,” said Pearltrees CEO Patrice Lamothe in a release. “As a consequence, Pearltrees harnesses the power of people to organize and discover the most valuable content on the web”, he said. With 5 Million More Euros in the Bank, Pearltrees Gets Ready to Scale and Start Monetizing.

The Paris-based social curation platform Pearltrees just announced that it has raised a Series B round of 5 million Euros (about $6.62 million USD).

With 5 Million More Euros in the Bank, Pearltrees Gets Ready to Scale and Start Monetizing

The money is coming from Group Accueil, which had also invested in the service’s previous round. In total, Pearltrees has now raised 8.5 million Euros. The company, which launched its first alpha almost 3 years ago, aims to use this money to scale its product and – maybe even more importantly – implement a freemium business model for its service. The company did not publicly discuss what exactly this freemium model will look like. Publications Pearltrees Grabs $6.6M In Funding For 'Interest Graphs' 02/14. Lured by the promise of better “interest graphs,” investors just ponied up about $6.6 million for social curation startup Pearltrees.

Publications Pearltrees Grabs $6.6M In Funding For 'Interest Graphs' 02/14

Great, but “what the heck is an interest graph?” Asks VentureBeat. Apparently, it’s “more about what you know than who you know,” it gathers, along with “strong connections to purchase intent and other matters of concern to online marketers.” “Put differently,” VB explains, “while social networks like Facebook focus on what you have in common with your friends … interest graph-based models [Pinterest, GetGlue, etc.] make social connections based on shared interests, not the other way around.” According to GigaOm, the startup really needs the money to help scale its system for bookmarking and organizing, which is based around a clustered visual interface. “Right now, Pearltrees is small and has moderate momentum, building up 350,000 users in the past three years,” GigOm writes.

Pearltrees Closes Series B to Continue Curating the Web. Pearltrees injects organization into your social interest graph. Pearltrees Announces $6.7m Funding Says It Will Start Charging For Premium Services. Posted by Tom Foremski - February 15, 2012 Congratulations to Pearltrees, (a former client) on raising 5 million Euros, about $6.7 million in Series B funding.

Pearltrees Announces $6.7m Funding Says It Will Start Charging For Premium Services

The Paris-based company offers a web service that groups users' selected web pages into collections of "pearls" - visual metaphors that can be shared and collected online by others. Here are more details from Pearltrees on the funding and its "freemium" plan, which will start charging some of its users for premium services. The Group Accueil, a privately held, diversified corporation that had invested previously, led the round. The new capital will allow the company to scale the product and monetize the service. Patrice Lamothe (Pearltrees) : "Pearltrees lève 5 millions d'euros pour engager sa stratégie de monétisation"

Le service de curation Pearltrees souhaite ouvrir son système d'arbres de perles à de nouveaux objets numériques et être rentable d'ici un an.

Patrice Lamothe (Pearltrees) : "Pearltrees lève 5 millions d'euros pour engager sa stratégie de monétisation"

JDN. Qu'est-ce que Pearltrees ? Patrice Lamothe. Pearltrees est un service en ligne de curation né en 2009 dont l'objectif est de permettre aux internautes d'organiser, de partager et de découvrir du contenu.