Wetpaint — A Technology Platform Company

Wetpaint is a technology platform company that uses its expertise in social media to build and monetize audiences. Wetpaint works with major media companies to implement the Wetpaint Social Distribution System, which optimizes content, timing and packaging of content to drive massive reach, engagement and monetizeable actions.

The company’s vision is to power a portfolio of best-in-class media properties; the first, Wetpaint Entertainment, delights 18- to 34-year-old women with in-depth coverage of their favorite TV shows, stars and fashion. Wetpaint Entertainment attracts more than 15 million unique visitors monthly and has over 3 million Facebook fans.

The rapid success of Wetpaint Entertainment is due to the company’s obsessive innovation around knowing its audience. This is made possible through the proprietary Wetpaint Social Distribution System, a patent-pending technology-based social experimentation platform.

Wetpaint was founded by Internet pioneer and digital media thought leader Ben Elowitz. The company’s leadership and results have been recognized across top media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD, Fortune, Forbes, TIME, CNNMoney, CNBC.com, Business Insider, TechCrunch, The Huffington Post, Media ReDEFined, paidContent, Poynter and more. Wetpaint has offices in Seattle and New York and is backed by Accel Partners, the investors behind Facebook.

About the Wetpaint Social Distribution System

Over the last two years, Wetpaint has developed the world’s most advanced technology and expertise in social publishing and distribution. This patent-pending system, called the Wetpaint Social Distribution System, is based on cutting-edge analytical methods that provide an accurate, real-time, and continuously-updating picture of audience interests and responsiveness. The system revolutionizes the relationship between publisher and audience by bringing real-time data to content-creation and programming — all by using the social web to both gather data about, and drive engagement of, the audience.

The Social Distribution System is made up of two primary components: the Social Experimentation Platform and the Social Playbook.

Wetpaint quickly recognized the advantage of its technology IP and invested in patent protection. The following are Wetpaint patents that are pending:

• Dynamic playbook: experimentation platform for social networks
• Optimizing content production based on distribution channel metrics
• Portfolio optimization for media merchandizing

Social Experimentation Platform

Wetpaint’s proprietary and scalable technology includes a dynamic A/B testing framework, prescriptive content programming guides, a real-time data warehouse and robust analytical tools to deliver best practices for social distribution. More details are below.

• A/B testing framework that allows for statistics-based testing of content merchandizing techniques and programs on relevant social channels.
• Prescriptive content programming guides for social marketers that ensure every communication with the audience is not just to drive traffic, but also an opportunity to learn something about the audience.
• Real-time data warehouse that combines impression, click, interaction, and conversion data from sources such as Google Analytics, Facebook, and Bitly to drive data-driven insights for the social program.
• A set of best practices for social distribution that is integrated directly into the tools for social marketers. These tools offer just-in-time, contextually-relevant recommendations around best social merchandizing tactics for a particular piece of content.
• A scalable and extensible system that allows for quick discovery of best practices for new audiences and social channels.
• Testing plan, including areas for intense testing focus as well as current tests and a prioritized list of future tests.

Social Playbook

Wetpaint captures all of its operational guidelines, methodology, dashboards, metrics, analyses, distribution targets and testing plans in a highly confidential (patent-pending) playbook. It contains the following:

• A set of operational best practices across each area of social marketing activity from page set-up to advertising execution.
• Documented methodology and procedures to enable decision-making across each niche target audience and interest segment.
• Dashboards, metrics and analyses that guarantee consistent focus on social distribution goals.
• Current distribution targets for each page which are displayed for everyone in the company to view and optimized daily based on real-time information.

Our Social Distribution System creates a constantly self-tuning engine that generates compounding results. With Facebook, for example, results are maximized by optimizing the relationship of the destination website, the growing base of fans, and the engagement and activation of fans via the newsfeed. Wetpaint is the first to crack the code on social distribution and is using this advantage to power a growing portfolio of properties.

Driving Incredible Results

It was important to develop a proof point for the technology platform. Wetpaint did that with Wetpaint Entertainment, a branded media property the company built and launched in late 2010. The audience results have been staggering and driven by the company’s incessant drive to test and iterate. The engine is now the company’s next-generation media platform.

Wetpaint is a leader in creating and monetizing audiences via the social web. Over the last 18 months we have proven our end-to-end approach, resulting in our test property surpassing all of the top 50 publishers on the web at driving audiences from Facebook and Twitter ― by more than 3X compared to the next best.

For more information about the Wetpaint Social Distribution System, please email Chris Kollas, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, at chris@wetpaint.com.