Tynt, a relatively straightforward product that gives web publishers control over copying/pasting activity on their website, just closed a $8 million second round of financing. The round was led by Panorama Capital, and partner Chris Albinson joined Tynt’s board of directors. Greycroft Partners and Metamorphic Ventures also participated in the round.
The company allows publishers to monitor copying of text on their websites. 2% of page views involve a user ctrl-c copying of text (for news sites, it’s 7%), Albinson told me today. None of that is tracked, and when that copied text is shared in emails or on social sites, there’s no link back. Tynt automatically adds a unique, trackable link back to the page in the copied text. It looks like this:
I was able to speak with bit.ly and betaworks CEO John Borthwick yesterday about Twitter’s unwinding of their relationship. The impact on bit.ly may be negligible, at least in the short run.
Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/16/borthwick-twitter-thanks-bit-ly/#ixzz0lIiy3q6f
Publishers get the benefit of analytics on how much copying is being done, and they get the benefit of the link back when that content is shared. You can try it here on TechCrunch, we just added Tynt.
This also gives publishers a way to see what interesting content is being copied. Albinson gave me an example of an article on the failing Detroit economy that got tons of Tynt action. But the sentence that was being copied was about how Ford was actually doing very well. That lets the publisher know what content is working at a deeper level than the article/post itself.
Publishers can also add a widget to their site which shows readers what content is being copied.
Some users complain about the feature because it adds content they didn’t intend to the copy. Most complaints, however, see to be around users who copy and paste into search engines. Tynt offers publishers the option of showing search results for copies of less than seven words. Try it here by selecting a couple of words and hitting ctrl-c.
The service is getting big – more than 10 billion page views a month have Tynt installed, says Albinson. And some big partners are coming on this month that will jump that to 50 billion. Tynt is also doing about 100 million monthly searches from the less-than-seven-words copy feature I mentioned above.
For now everything is free, but Tynt is rolling out new versions of the service this year that will bring in revenue, says Albinson.