Prospero Technologies Introduces Broadest Suite of Social Media Integration Capabilities for Developing Pervasive Online Communities

September 24, 2007; 11:14 AM
LITTLETON, MA-- Prospero Technologies, LLC (www.Prospero.com), a provider of social media applications for leading brands, today announced new integration enhancements that enable any organization, regardless of technical resources, to easily integrate interactive features throughout its sites. Prospero's new social media application integration capabilities provide developers and non-technical online community managers unprecedented flexibility, integration and scalability options for integrating and customizing social media applications such as message boards, personal profile pages, chats, polls, ratings and reviews into their websites.

Prospero's three-tiered approach for integrating and customizing social media applications -- the most comprehensive solution on the market today -- includes Prospero Templates, Prospero Widgets, and Prospero Advanced APIs.

Prospero Templates provide a turnkey option for organizations with no available technical resources who want to quickly deploy social media applications that match the look, feel and branding personality of their website. For organizations interested in serving pages themselves, Prospero Widgets use AJAX and other techniques to create "mashups" -- or pages comprised of their own content interactive components leveraging Prospero's platform. And for organizations that want direct access to the data content or content elements to integrate comments, discussions, live chat or other interactive features into existing content, Prospero offers Advanced APIs.

"We're using Prospero Widgets to allow concert, theater and sports fans to share their experiences at matches and shows they love," said Taylor Wescoatt, vice president of product at Seatwave, an online marketplace where fans can buy and sell tickets for concerts, theater, sports and live events. "Prospero's Web 2.0 approach integrates easily with our site and we expect this added interactive element to complement the social media features we already have in place for our growing community of sports, music and theater enthusiasts."

"Our new flexible approach to integration of social media applications combined with our unique ability to offer customers a hosted service for increased traffic of new online community applications support the technical and marketing objectives of sites operated by leading brands," said Rusty Williams, vice president of Prospero Technologies. "As entertainment and large online publishers continue to build user-generated content throughout their site, we believe Prospero's centrally managed and efficiently monitored content infrastructure will be a critical component for monetizing these online communities in the future."

Centralized and Efficient Management Platform with the Best Moderation Tools

Through its CommunityCM platform, Prospero provides a sophisticated and centralized administration console to monitor, maintain and control all social media applications for enterprise-class scalability and reliability, regardless of the integration technique used for deployment. Since all the data including message posts, attachments, blog entries, comments, profiles, ratings and other user-generated content is maintained independent of layout and delivery, Prospero's various application integration techniques can be combined and customized at any time to create a seamless community experience for users.

Prospero also offers the most comprehensive range of moderation services to protect brands and advertisers from inappropriate content. Automated CommunityCM Moderation Tools and unique Community Management Services provide front-line support in helping clients manage and maintain order in their high-traffic message boards, blogs and chat discussions.

Prospero Templates

Prospero's flexible templates provide organizations with a turnkey approach for launching new social media applications. This technique offers fast time to market and requires almost no client technical resources. Template pages are hosted by Prospero, yet are seamlessly integrated with all aspects of an organization's website. Prospero provides the page layout, hosting, styling, personalization, and business logic along with the user access controls and content. Templates incorporate the overall look and feel, navigation, tracking tags, and advertising into an organization's site while also providing a seamless online experience for the end-user.

      Example: CBS.com uses Prospero Templates to design message boards
      for all of their prime time television shows that match the look
      and feel of the show and the CBS site.

Prospero Widgets

Prospero Widgets are used to embed social media anywhere on an organization's site. Social media components are mixed with articles, videos, pictures or products to enable people to comment, discuss, rate and review content. Widgets can be used to embed interactivity in contextually relevant places on the site. Multiple widgets can be embedded on any page and include links for rating, comments and statistics.

      Example: ABCNews.com uses Prospero Widgets to include a "talkback"
      box with every story that ABC News publishes, allowing users to
      post comments and reactions next to the article.

Prospero Advanced APIs

Additionally, for organizations that have engineering resources and want more control over page layout and branding, Prospero APIs provide enhanced capabilities utilizing JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and web services. The JSON technique offers a high level of flexibility by giving organizations total control of the page layout and branding while Prospero provides the structured data, business logic, and personalization. The web services technique allows for direct server-to-sever communication. Prospero provides a web service with a WSDL (Web Services Description Language) available, and organizations can push data to Prospero via this service.

      Example: ESPN uses Prospero's API to create "conversation pages,"
      message boards, and a list of "most commented" articles.

About Prospero Technologies

Prospero Technologies offers social media solutions that enable leading brands to integrate interactive features throughout their sites. This interaction provides insight and builds more profitable relationships. Prospero's CommunityCM platform delivers the widest range of social media applications, the most powerful moderation tools and the most open, flexible widgets and APIs. Prospero's hosted community solutions enable organizations to easily, quickly and cost effectively develop custom-branded applications such as message boards, blogs, live chat, event chat, wikis, and polls to encourage site visitors to participate, rate, review, comment and submit their own content. These applications are all managed using a single, intuitive platform. The company has a proven track record with leading brands such as CBS, BusinessWeek, ESPN, Monster, American Diabetes Association, BabyCenter, GE Healthcare, Real Networks, FOX, Wharton Business School, Hallmark, Virgin Media and NASCAR. For additional information, visit www.Prospero.com or call 978.698.6599.