Updated at 8:34 a.m. PT with more details from Fanzy’s Tuhin Roy.
Marketing app Fanzy has raised $550,000 in new seed funding to help brands and companies better market themselves on Facebook and give rewards to influential Facebook fans.
Much like what Klout does, Fanzy makes it possible for brands to dish out gifts to Facebook fans that are influential and have a high “fan score.” (Klout uses a “Klout score” to identify influencers that might be good to reward.) Facebook pages that are already using Fanzy include Hotels.com, Nirvana, Smirnoff, LMFAO, T.I., Tiesto, and the Sacramento Kings.
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While the language on its site might suggest otherwise, Fanzy co-Founder Tuhin Roy told VentureBeat that the service does not push people to spam their friends with targeted messages in order to get gifts.
“We do not reward people for posting,” Roy said. “Facebook has a policy against incentivized posting. We’ve sat down with humans at Facebook’s headquarters and made sure we comply with this.”
While Fanzy has helped brands grow on Facebook, it now wants to focus on bringing its services to enterprises. The company will use the new funds to boost its sales team and to get better traction among the Fortune 1000. Fanzy claims that more than 20,000 Facebook pages are using Fanzy and that “more than 20 Fortune 1000 companies” have used its platform.
“One of the main reasons brands use us is because they are managing several pages and that can be challenging,” Roy said. “It means that they can leverage all these different fan bases without as much investment.”
The new funding comes from Kima Ventures, Paolo Rubatto’s Start Capital, and OREFA. Including today’s round, Fanzy has raised to more than $1.5 million to date.
Check out the video below for more on Fanzy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H-Pdev-ytY
Top photo via Fanzy/YouTube
