The player: Danny Kastner, CEO and founder of FanRocket
The play: FanRocket is pursuing a fast-moving sector of the growing online video market by providing the tools for media companies to add social networking features to their video sites. FanRocket’s aim is to grow social communities around online TV, entertainment and sports brands. More than 70 percent of Americans between 15 and 34 actively use social networks, according to a recent study commissioned by MySpace and digital agency Isobar. The ad potential is enormous. Research firm eMarketer predicts that U.S. online social network ad spending will grow from $350 million last year to $865 million this year. By 2010, that figure will exceed $2.2 billion.
The pitch: The FanRocket technology operates as modules so customers can add more features as they wish. “The whole idea is to give users the ability to build their own applications on top of that,” he said. FanRocket includes editorial filtering tools and also can syndicate social media features across the Web.