Wikio Group, best known for operating the Wikio news engine, has secured $25 million in financing from investors and is changing its name to ebuzzing, an existing product in its portfolio.
Gimv, one of the main investment companies in Europe, is investing $14.5m, alongside existing shareholders and the founder, Pierre Chappaz. The idea is to become the leader in social media in Europe. What does that mean exactly? Well, Ebuzzing also owns Overblog, a leading blog platform in Europe with over 28 million unique visitors per month according to Comscore. Essentially all of Ebuzzing’s properties provide a route for marketers to promote their brands on social media, in particular via viral video.
Ebuzzing made revenues of $15 million in 2010, and expects revenues for this year at USD 25 million. It employs over 160 staff and has offices in Basel, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, London, Luxembourg, Milan, Paris, Madrid, Toulouse and Rome.
Ebuzzing has been pretty busy on the M&A front, rolling up other smaller European marketing platforms like Trigami, a social marketing platform in German-speaking countries.
Pierre Chappaz, CEO of Ebuzzing says the financing will allow them to “speed up our growth” throughout Europe. Geoffroy Dubuz, Partner Venture Capital at Gimv is clear that when it comes to Europe Ebuzzing “is a reference platform for the distribution of content on social media in Europe.”