Livefyre lands $4.5M to take on Facebook comments
Livefyre, the software platform that embeds live commenting on websites, has secured $4.5 million in a new round of funding. The San Francisco-based company says it plans to use the money to hire more engineers and salespeople and expand its products.
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook made embedded comments its next media push at the start of 2011, with comments positioned as the company's move on publisher conversations, and by May rival Disqus had answered with a $10 million raise that doubled its team despite Facebook's entry. Livefyre's $4.5 million round is the second independent platform to raise against that backdrop in under six months.
The bet both startups are making is that publishers want the conversation hosted on their own pages — with identity, moderation and SEO they control — rather than ceded to Facebook's widget. The new money goes into engineers and salespeople, which reads as a land-grab for publisher accounts while the category is still being decided.
First-order effects
- Livefyre can now staff up engineering and sales to expand its product line, directly contesting the publisher-commenting deals Facebook's widget has been winning since early 2011.
Second-order effects
- Disqus, freshly armed with its own $10 million from May, faces a better-funded peer in the same sales cycles, pushing both toward faster feature releases and more aggressive pricing for publishers weighing Facebook's free option.
Third-order effects
- If independent platforms keep securing capital, site-hosted commenting solidifies as a paid product category rather than a free handout from social networks — forcing publishers to choose whether audience conversation data accrues to their own properties or to Facebook.
The trend: Third-party commenting platforms are consolidating venture backing to hold the line against Facebook's expansion into publisher engagement infrastructure.