ShoutEm, a white-label mobile and location social network startup, has secured $1.2 million in a second round investment from Slovenian venture capital fund RSG Capital. With the advent of hyperlocal news, Shout’Em will let smaller websites and business monetize their communities through local advertising as well as vouchers.
As part of the funding round, ShoutEm is being spun off into a separate company – Shout Ltd – and plans to open offices in London and New York for business development and sales, while keeping their core development team in Croatia. ShoutEm previously raised seed round of funding of $500,000 from Bicro in late 2008.
Unlike Ning and Yammer, ShoutEm is focusing heavily on their iPhone, BlackBerry and soon to be released Android apps. In March of this year, ShoutEm added location features leveraging Foursquare’s API and Twitter’s GeoAPI, letting users create a social network with an emphasis on location, including check-ins and, as said, local vouchers.
Easier monetization of the communities could give ShoutEm more business users which will be easier to monetize. With over 20,000 networks, ShoutEm shouldn’t get caught in the trap of hosting too many unmonetizable communities, like Ning did.
Five Minutes, the parent company of ShoutEm, will be getting a new CEO while co-founder Viktor Marohnic focuses more on ShoutEm and its development.