Contextual Content Aggregation Firm OneSpot Gets $4.2 Million Funding
This story was written by Rafat Ali.
OneSpot, an Austin, Texas based online contextual content aggregation firm, has received $4.2 million in funding in its first round, led by Silver Creek Ventures, it said. The company, founded in 2006, previously raised about $1 million in its angel funding, including from Mike Maples (former EVP at Microsoft) and Pat Horner (co-founder and former COO of Perot Systems), both of whom participated in this new round as well.
OneSpot's white-label service allows publishers to show automatic related links from third party sources next to their stories or pages (using widgets), much like say Techmeme does automatic content aggregation on tech/Internet topics. Customers include WSJ.com, MarketWatch and SFGate.com. Some examples of its implementation are here. Competition is fierce in this category, with other startups such as AggregateKnowledge, Inform.com, Daylife, Outbrain and many others offering similar contextualized news aggregation services for publishers, though each with their own twists.
Founder and CEO Matt Cohen was previously a partner with Austin VC firm G-51 Capital, but more interestingly was SVP of ops and CTO for New Century Network, the newspaper online ad consortium of yore that closed down in 1998. He also co-founded HoustonChronicle.com in 1994.
By Rafat Ali