Vitrue Raises $17 Million For To Help Brands Manage Social Media

Vitrue, a social media marketing company, has raised $17 million in Series C financing led by Scale Venture Partners and Advent Venture Partners with existing investors General Catalyst Partners, Comcast Interactive, and Dace Ventures participating in the round. This brings Vitrue’s total funding to $32 million. In conjunction with the announcement, former Facebook Vice President of Global Sales Mike Murphy has joined Vitrue as Special Advisor to the CEO.

As we’ve written in the past, Vitrue’s SaaS platform allows brands and marketing agencies to
communicate with fans and consumers across Facebook and Twitter accounts, location based services, and via mobile applications. The company’s SRM (social relationship management) platform is being used by a number of high profile brands including Harley Davidson, Mentos, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Crocs, Eddie Bauer, Maybelline, Purina, McDonald’s, YouTube, Ford, AT&T, Disney and Best Buy.

And Vitrue is growing in terms of revenue and is cash-flow positive. From Q2 2010 to Q3 2010, Vitrue’s revenue grew nearly 100 percent as the company tripled accounts using their SRM platform and expanded its API.

Currently, the service manages over 2,500 Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts for various clients, which adds up to 450 million fans/followers in 47 countries. That’s up from 680 Twitter and Facebook accounts managed in October of 2010.

With the new financing, Vitrue will be opening offices in seven U.S. markets including New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati and Los Angeles. The company is also expanding globally, creating presences in London, Toronto and Singapore. And to support all these new outposts, Vitrue will be hiiring between 100 and 150 new employees in 2011.