Toronto-based web platform creators Scribble Technologies Inc. has acquired another well-known live publishing platform in CoveritLive from California-based Demand Media.
CoveritLive is used by major media brands across North America to cover live events such as sports matches, conventions, and other media events. Scribble’s ScribbleLive is similarly used by media brands to engage an online audience during a live event, like the recent World Cup football matches. Both platforms are complements to the second-screen trend that sees more people surfing the web while they watch TV, looking to engage with others sharing the experience.
Now Toronto’s ScribbleLive will own both those content engagement platforms. The combined firm will add up to more than 500 enterprise-grade customers, 1500 total customers, the four professional sports leagues in North America (NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB), more than half of North America’s most-read newspapers, and all three of the top-rated news networks in the U.S., according to ScribbleLive.
“We think this content engagement market we’re playing in is a very important opportunity,” says Vincent Mifsud, CEO at ScribbleLive. “It’s important to get critical mass as soon as possible to be a front runner in the market.”
Both platforms serve the same purpose – centralizing content from the web around a live event into one conversation. Both allow publishing of text, video, and photo along with curation of social networking sites, comments from the audience, and support mobile access while also delivering metrics on usage.
But Mifsud says the firms have complementary technology that will enhance the overall offering. ScribbleLive, for example, offers marketers tools around measuring impact of content and determining what content is most effective at creating engagement. “On the other side, CoverItLive has scoreboards and different kinds of experiences for marketers to create.”
The terms of the deal were not disclosed, as Demand Media is a publicly traded company. While the two products will continue to operate separately for now, plans for integration are being made this month. Mifsud says he expects to have a single offering ready by the end of 2014.
“It will be one single content engagement platform that handles the whole process from planning, to distributing, to publishing and optimizing the result,” he says. Since the CoverItLive engineering team is already based in Toronto, that will help smooth the transition.
Now the CEO sees his main competition as coming from other U.S. content marketing platforms including NewsCred, Livefyre, and Percolate.