FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
REDWOOD CITY, California — OCTOBER 23, 2007 — Bunchball, a Web services company dedicated to making websites more addictive, today announced the launch of its new Web Catalytics service, Nitro. Bunchball created the Web Catalytics category to help website owners engage their users on a deeper level by using proven techniques that motivate and encourage certain behaviors. Consumers can currently take part in Nitro-powered activities on Facebook and on NBCs "Dunder Mifflin Infinity" (DMI), an interactive website designed for fans of the hit TV program, "The Office."
"Web Catalytics is an entirely new category and Bunchball is the first player," said Karsten Weide, Program Director, Digital Media and Entertainment at research firm IDC. "The function of web analytics is to analyze data, whereas web catalytics goes deeper into what motivates behavior and subsequently drives user activity. This area is still generally un-chartered, so we are interested to see how Bunchball penetrates the market. Weve been impressed with what we have seen so far."
One of the first commercial deployments of Nitro is for NBC Digital Entertainment. Fans of the award-winning TV show "The Office" can go to the DMI website at www.dundermifflininfinity.com and form their own Dunder Mifflin branches. Nitro is powering the virtual office found on this site. "Employees" are asked to perform weekly tasks and challenges that are rewarded with SchruteBucks, which can then be used to purchase items to decorate an employee's virtual office as they climb the Dunder Mifflin corporate ladder.
"We are building the virtual playground our online fans have asked for," said Vivi Zigler, Executive Vice President, NBC Digital Entertainment. "Bunchballs Nitro has allowed us to customize the experience and give our fans more incentive to participate in DMI and have fun with our new site."
Nitro makes it easy for website owners to engage users through reward based activities. These activities can include: registering, filling out profile data, taking surveys, trying new site features, playing games, watching video, and more. Users receive points that can be redeemed for site-specific offerings or in the digital goods marketplace that Nitro provides.
The foundation of Nitro is an API that enables secure communication between a site owner and the Nitro server. When a user takes part in any desired activity on the site, an event is sent to the Nitro server and fed through a rules engine that determines the appropriate reaction and reward.
A front-end user interface is also available through add-on modules that can be easily dropped into any webpage. Website owners can choose to add Virtual Goods and Avatars (purchase and gift digital items, buy clothing and accessories for personal avatars, or award trophies when tasks are completed), Community interaction (chat, blogs, news feeds, leaderboards and friends lists), or Games functionality (single, multiplayer, tournaments). Facebook was one of the first deployments of Nitros front-end modules, and includes the Avatar module, the Games module and the Trophy module. On Facebook, users can earn points for playing games, which can then be used to add clothing and accessories to their Avatars. A trophy room displays the users accomplishments, which are awarded when the user completes pre-determined game feats.
"Engagement is the new metric for online success," said Rajat Paharia, founder and CEO of Bunchball. "We saw our traffic on Facebook double within days of launching Nitro there. In just a few short weeks some Facebook users have played thousands of games and many are even using their Avatars as their profile picture on Facebook. Users are more engaged with our application than ever before, and are spending more time on Facebook with the addition of Nitro."
Nitro is available now. The API is priced at $10,000 per month for the hosted service. Each Nitro module is priced at $5,000 per month. For more information contact .
Bunchball is a Web services company dedicated to making websites more addictive through Web Catalytics. Bunchball has been supporting customers like Lifetime Television, NBC Sports, Piczo, Facebook, ABC/Disney and Toyota to increase site stickiness through online social play. Based in Redwood City, CA, Bunchball was founded in February 2005 and can be found online at www.bunchball.com.
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| Susan Lusty 206-331-4659 |
Karen Blondell 310-325-6405 |
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