Kiva.org chooses Involver video campaign platform to tap into Facebook and MySpace.

San Francisco, CA / August 26, 2008 — Involver today announced that over 100,000 Facebook and MySpace users have discovered Kiva.org, with thousands sharing the
“I lend because…” Kiva video on their personal profiles. These users are now promoting micro-lending to their personal networks, extending the reach of Kiva.org to an audience that was largely unfamiliar with their cause.

Kiva chose the Involver video campaign platform to tap into Facebook and MySpace, attracting a new audience to their person-to-person micro-lending website. Kiva understands the power of connecting people for a common cause, and hopes to empower members of social networks to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

“We want to extend our community beyond Kiva.org and join the conversation on social networks like Facebook and MySpace in a very personal and dynamic way,” says Premal Shah, president of Kiva.org. “Involver’s deep integration with the leading social networks let Kiva deliver a very emotional appeal and introduce micro-lending to a new audience in a clear and simple way.”

Involver recently launched the pilot program for its video campaign platform to transform the user experience for video marketing from simply passive (”watch this and hope they click”) to active and engaged. The Involver platform lets viewers immediately interact with video in a simple, non-obtrusive way, dramatically increasing engagement.

“Our video campaign platform automatically built branded Facebook and MySpace applications for the Kiva video, allowing people to discover and share the campaign with friends in a non-intrusive way,” says Rahim Fazal, co-founder and CEO of Involver. “We have created a dynamic and personalized way for lenders to communicate and extend the Kiva experience to a new audience.”

Involver is accepting applications to join its pilot program and plans to add new companies as they expand to support additional large video campaigns. Involver plans to open access to their video campaign platform later this year.

On the eve of his 22^nd birthday, Usain Bolt makes track-and-field history.

Tonight in Beijing in the 200-meter final, the Jamaican sprinter surged to his second Olympic gold medal, crossing the finish line in a staggering world-record time of 19.30 seconds. The previous 200m mark was held for over 12 years by Michael Johnson, and no one thought that it would ever be broken… let alone smashed by an ascendant star who finished this race about four body lengths ahead of everyone else.

Bolt is the first runner ever to break both the 100m and 200m records at the same Olympics, and the first since Carl Lewis in 1984 to win the “Sprint Double.”

We’re excited to be a part of this amazing moment in sporting and Olympic history. Over the next week, we’ll be posting new video content to the Involver-powered chasingBOLT campaign, so please make sure to check back here.

Join us in congratulating Usain! Through Puma’s chasingBOLT Facebook app, you can send him a personal photo message right now. Submit anything — a written note, a picture of you and your friends celebrating Usain’s world records, etc. As a bonus, Puma will mail some Limited Edition Gold Medal/World Record T-shirts to the campaign members who send in the best photo submissions. (Usain will do the choosing — he’ll be watching the app constantly!)

To send a photo message to Usain Bolt, simply log in to your Facebook account and then go to the app homepage. (Follow the links in the big yellow box).

Congratulations, Usain!

9.69 seconds — That’s the new 100m world record set today by Usain Bolt, the star of Puma’s chasingBOLT video campaign. Usain won his Olympic gold medal in astounding style, smashing his own previous world record in front of a sellout crowd of 91,000.

Read the full story in this New York Times article. The headline says it all: “Bolt Is World’s Fastest — by a Mile.”

Stay tuned for some great video updates to the chasingBOLT campaign. It’s time to celebrate!

With the 2008 Beijing Olympics in full swing, Usain Bolt is ready to go. This Saturday night, all eyes will be on the Jamaican sprinter as he vies for Gold in his first event, the 100 meters.

But you don’t have to wait to see him compete! Puma has posted a great Flash game that allows you to run lane-to-lane with Bolt in a primetime, simulated contest. While we didn’t do so well — we put in a 11.55 sec 100m — we hope you’ll be up for your own challenge. Click here to play “RACE BOLT.”

We’re excited to see the Involver-powered chasingBOLT campaign keep pace with the world’s fastest man. Since the launch of the campaign late last week, Puma’s videos have garnered over 225,000 views through the Involver Platform alone, and the chasingBOLT Facebook app already has thousands of active users. And all the while Puma has been able to publish a new video every day. Using Involver’s easy self-serve builder, the company has distributed four videos so far, and updated its branded video player with a number of custom plugins (like the game button), all on-the-fly.

After you race Bolt, leave us a comment with how you did. If you don’t beat Bolt in the race, we’re guessing you can at least beat our 11.55 time.

Well, the Involver Video Campaign Platform does, at any rate. Today, we are excited to announce Puma’s “chasingBolt” blogumentary produced by coBRANDiT and distributed through Involver.

coBRANDiT and Puma used the Involver Platform to create the custom video player below as well as a full-featured, branded Facebook application.

Watch this daily video journal as it follows Jamaica’s Usain Bolt, the current 100m world record holder, as he trains, eats, sleeps, runs, and (hopefully) wins his way into history at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

“Having the world record is great, but the real goal is an Olympic gold,” Bolt said shortly after setting the 9.72 sec World Record in New York City on May 31st. “Someone will break my world record. But you’re always an Olympic Champion.” Usain will be competing for Olympic gold in the 100m, 200m, and the 4×100m relay.

The chasingBOLT blogumentary has been following the Jamaican star from Kingston to the Big Apple to Europe and on to Beijing. Viewers will have unrivaled access to this charismatic phenom and have a chance to run with the fastest human being in the world. Check regularly for new content, posted every weekday.

coBRANDiT, in conjunction with Puma and the “chasingBOLT” campaign, is a member of the Involver Pilot Program. You can sign up now to leverage the power of Involver for your video campaign. The deadline to apply is August 29th. Request access to the Pilot Program today!

Today we’re excited to announce some great results from one of our first Pilot Program campaigns.

Using Involver’s marketing platform, Serena Software achieved a click-through rate of .7% on Facebook, with over 1.1 million views of their video commercial. The platform delivered a much higher conversion rate than the .05% industry norm for Facebook. This overall outcome is even more exciting since it’s one of the first times Facebook has been successfully used for B2B marketing.

Here’s what Serena had to say about the campaign and their results:

“With the recent launch of business mashups and our SaaS delivery capability Serena Software has significantly increased the available market for our products. For this reason, we are constantly on the lookout for new and innovative ways to reach our customer base,” says Michael Parker, Senior Director, Global Marketing, at Serena Software. “By implementing our Facebook campaign on Involver’s marketing platform, we converted 1.1M views on Facebook into more than 8000 visitors to our website.”

Read more in this press release. Congrats, Serena!

A quick heads-up — we will be accepting applications to join our Pilot Program until Friday, August 29th. This program allows select customers to use our marketing platform for building and launching video campaigns on Facebook and other social networks.

The Pilot Program is an opportunity for Involver to offer significant value through close one-on-one consulting. We want program participants to have an excellent user experience all around (in setting up their campaigns, in creating their own branded Facebook applications, etc.), but we also want to make sure that, at the end, these initial campaigns are successful and reach and engage their intended audiences. The Pilot Program lets us build best practices as well as generate early success stories for other marketers’ consideration.

We’ve seen two enormous successes with our first two Pilot members, Serena Software and Kiva. Again, the deadline to apply is August 29th. Request access to the Pilot Program today!

We recently launched a Pilot Program for our new video campaign platform, with Serena Software and Kiva as our first two commercial users. Read the full press release here.

Here’s what Serena and Kiva have to say about Involver:

“Serena is embracing Facebook as a business-to-business platform, and we even moved to it for our corporate intranet,” says Rene Bonvanie, Senior Vice President, worldwide marketing, partner programs, and online services of Serena Software. “When we decided to bring our successful ‘@#$% It’ campaign to Facebook, we shared Involver’s understanding of social networking and agreed with their vision to create a platform that turns impressions into leads.”

“As a site which connects individuals around the world through micro-loans, Kiva embraces social networking and the concept of empowering groups of people for a common cause,” says Premal Shah, president of Kiva.org. “Involver’s video platform with its deeply integrated Facebook application allows us to build a social community that makes it very easy for our members to participate and share this experience with other people in their network.”

We’re really excited to help Serena and Kiva reach and engage social networks!

Last Wednesday, we were invited to be the pre-launch demo at STIRR’s DealHacks in Palo Alto! Previous guest demos include Gigya and Get Satisfication. Our team had a great time previewing our end-to-end video platform to over 100+ entrepreneurs and investors

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After many months of non-stop development, the Involver team was glad to see and hear a lot of positive feedback from the STIRR crowd. We know that the excitement is based in large part on our implementation of a powerful idea — i.e., the ability to create, distribute, and track video campaigns should be open to and easy for ALL.

A special thank you to Sanford Barr for organizing a wonderful event! Sanford and STIRR have a real knack for connecting entrepreneurs and generating lively and meaningful discussion (as opposed to one-way podium talk). Kudos, DealHacks!

Thanks also to Sun Microsystems for sponsoring the event, and to Jeff Clavier, Rob Hayes, and Adeo Ressi for their entertaining and insightful stories about entrepreneurship.

Now that we’ve had this chance to show a sneak peek, it’s time for the real thing. Involver will be launching shortly, so stay tuned!

Check out STIRR’s coverage of their event here and here.

Some photos from the event (from STIRR.net):

We’ve changed our name! RapOuts is now officially Involver.

Why did we do this? Well, we were looking for a new name that effectively captured our company’s mission as well as our core product. And while we are very much a video company, we didn’t want to opt for a name that symbolized or referenced traditional video display. And that’s because, from Day 1, one of our key goals has been to provide something greater — i.e., a robust end-to-end solution for turning video viewers on social networks into real leads, real customers, real supporters.

So, Involver offers involvement-for-conversion: we’ve built an easy-to-use platform that allows any marketer to create, distribute, and track effective video campaigns on various social networks.

We hope you like the new name!