Social ad targeting company 33Across just announced that it has acquired Tynt.
What’s Tynt? Well, if you’ve ever tried to copy-and-paste a quote from an article and discovered that there was suddenly some extra text and a link attached (for example, “Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/16/borthwick-twitter-thanks-bit-ly/#ixzz0lIiy3q6f”), you have Tynt to thank for that. Not only does it add attribution to copied text, it also uses copy-and-paste data to make larger recommendations about a publisher’s search engine optimization and social networking lift.
33Across CEO Eric Wheeler describes the deal as helping his company reach “both sides of the ecosystem” — where 33Across wants to help advertisers understand their social reach, Tynt is doing the same for publishers. He says 33Across will continue to offer publisher tools under the Tynt name. At the same time, the 500,000 publishers who work with Tynt will now have access to 33Across’ “Brand Graph“, which identifies people who are likely to become loyal to a specific brand, based on their social connections and interests.
The acquisition price was not disclosed, but Wheeler says the entire Tynt team will be joining 33Across. The company also says that post-acquisition, it now has “the largest social and interest graph across in the world,” with 1.25 billion “users.” The comparison to companies like Google and Facebook seems a little odd, since 33Across doesn’t have users in the same way those other companies do, but maybe I’m just quibbling with the wording. Anyway, the point is clear — 33Across and Tynt have data about a lot of people.
