Conduit Brings Social Networking to the Browser with New Toolbar Applications

San Mateo, Calif. – June 1, 2009 – Conduit, a leading provider of website syndication solutions, today announced several significant advancements in the integration of social media tools with its marketing platform. Notably, the company reached a recent milestone, having surpassed more than 5,000 publishers that have implemented social media tools on their community toolbars.

June 01, 2009 — San Mateo, Calif. – June 1, 2009 – Conduit, a leading provider of website syndication solutions, today announced several significant advancements in the integration of social media tools with its marketing platform. Notably, the company reached a recent milestone, having surpassed more than 5,000 publishers that have implemented social media tools on their community toolbars. Also, Ping.fm, the simple service that makes updating social networks a snap, will soon launch a Conduit-powered community toolbar that allows its users to “Ping” and “Post” right in the browser window. In addition, Conduit also released native Twitter and Facebook components -- built with Twitter and Facebook APIs -- that are available free of charge to publishers of community toolbars created on the Conduit marketing platform. 

Conduit recently completed a review of its more than 180,000 web publishers and determined that over 5,000 have added social media/networking components to their community toolbars. Hundreds of different components were added from a broad range of social networks and applications including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, ShareThis, Hi5, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, Digg, Delicious and many more.

“Social media should be an integral part of any online marketing or public relations program,” said Sally Falkow, online marketing expert, co-founder of PRESSfeed, and publisher of the PRESSfeed community toolbar. “While the proliferation of social media offers marketers new channels for sharing targeted information, the overload remains a concern. A customized community toolbar, powered by Conduit, is a natural method to consolidate content, applications, services, and more into one location for users.”

Ping.fm, a leading social media tool, will launch their first-ever community toolbar, which will soon be available for installation from the Ping.fm site. “Social media has become extremely popular and now individuals and companies have a variety of different means to communicate with their audiences,” said Sean McCullough, Founder & CEO, Ping.fm. “With this popularity, however, there are an overwhelming number of choices and lots of content to maintain. Ping.fm has simplified this by providing a service for updating many social networks from a single interface. And now we have made this process even easier with a branded community toolbar from which our users can post messages. Together, Ping.fm and Conduit have made social media very, very simple.”

Finally, in order to fully leverage the power of social media for publishers and users alike, Conduit has created two native components -- for Twitter and Facebook. The Twitter Reader enables web publishers to post their Tweets on their toolbar, which can be read by users even if they do not have a Twitter account. More, toolbar publishers can add any other Twitter account to their feed, including industry experts and celebrities. Using the Facebook component, users can update their status, see how many friends are online, and access their Inbox and Friend Requests directly from the toolbar, without ever having to visit the Facebook site.

“Community toolbars provide a powerful tool to aggregate publishers’ content across multiple social media applications in one place for their users,” said Adam Boyden, President, Conduit. “Now users can stay in touch with their favorite web publishers and also have the tools at their disposal to share information with their own networks. This is an optimal situation for web publishers to create buzz without huge investments in marketing.” 

The Conduit platform is available free of charge. No technical skills are necessary to create a community toolbar; the flexible and powerful Conduit marketing platform enables one-click integration of any social media or web 2.0 tool. To learn more about the Conduit platform and how it can help advance your social media marketing program, go to www.conduit.com.
 
About Conduit

Conduit provides website syndication solutions for web publishers that increase site traffic, revenue, and brand loyalty while simplifying access to the content, communities and applications that subscribers care about most. By creating a direct, always-on connection between publishers and subscribers, Conduit opens new channels for real-time communication and commerce. More than 180,000 publishers have joined the Conduit network worldwide, including major brands such as Fox News, Lufthansa, Major League Baseball, Greenpeace, TechCrunch, Softonic and small and medium organizations in 180 countries around the globe. Web publishers who become part of the Conduit network have the opportunity to syndicate their website content and applications directly to the browser by allowing subscribers to add them as simply as adding an RSS feed. The Conduit Website Syndication Platform has earned the prestigious TRUSTe Trusted Download certification. To create a community toolbar for your website, visit: www.conduit.com.


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Press Contacts:
Dayna Verstegen
Director, Marketing Communications
Direct: +1.650.340.1550 #101
dayna@conduit.com