SezWho Releases New Review and Reputation Features; Also Announces $1 Million in Series A Financing

Oct. 31, 2007 - PRLog -- LOS ALTOS,Calif.– SezWho (www.sezwho.com) announced a series of new features to enhance the online community experience and elevate conversations among participants. The company also raised $1 million from KPG Ventures in its first round of funding. SezWho is a collaborative review and reputation service that informs and improves conversations across distributed social spaces. It supports blogs, forums, social networks, wikis – any site that features user-generated content.

SezWho gives every online community the power of eBay-like ratings and reputations, providing community participants with valuable information about the views and expertise of the individuals who contribute through comments and content. Visitors can rate user-generated content based on the value provided. Next to each comment is a simple question: “Was this comment useful to you?”  A cumulative ranking is then associated with each comment, which collectively provides an overall score associated with individual profiles. SezWho lets reviewers take their reputation and reviews with them wherever they participate on the web, offering a snapshot of their expertise and knowledge throughout all SezWho-enabled sites.

Among the new community enhancing features, SezWho introduced two new widgets. The Red Carpet widget lets communities feature top-rated participants on a virtual red carpet. Each avatar links to individual profiles that provide a history of comments, associated articles or pages, and the overall ranking for each. The new SezWho badge lets contributors display their personal rating and expertise portfolio on their blogs or other sites to reinforce an earned reputation.

Beyond tracking conversations and the value of individual contributions, the latest SezWho release also provides statistics for both contributors and site owners. Contributor statistics show who and how many people are rating and viewing a contributor's profile. Site statistics show how much additional traffic SezWho is driving and where that traffic is coming from.

All types of community participants benefit from SezWho. Readers use SezWho to find interesting content quickly and easily based on community ratings. Content contributors build credibility with SezWho, then carry reputations and aggregated knowledge to other sites. Site owners leverage contributor-based content discovery to drive traffic and encourage community participation. SezWho drives traffic through contributor profiles that link to additional content within the community.

Since the launch of the SezWho beta site June 2007, the service is live on over 300 sites, with more than 100,000 users. The funding will be used to accelerate SezWho’s growth and the continued development of tools and services to facilitate and enhance community-based conversations.


About SezWho
SezWho (www.sezwho.com), launched in June 2007, is a collaborative review and reputation service that informs and improves conversation across distributed social spaces. It supports blogs, forums, social networks, wikis – any site that deals with collaborative content. SezWho encourages a more engaged community by inspiring commenters to leave more insightful comments, as well as have readers vote on the feedback of others.

About KPG Ventures
KPG Ventures, a San Francisco based venture capital firm founded by Vince Vannelli, brings capital, experience and strategic relationships to early and seed stage companies. KPG is committed to investing in talented people and actively supporting each portfolio company in building their business.

Trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Press Contact:
Brian Solis
FutureWorks
408.393.9808
brian@future-works.com