Spongecell has extended its publishing platform to include Facebook (News - Alert), a leading social website that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers.

Spongecell is a web-based software application that creates direct, one- on-one engagement between brands and consumers and converts interest into participation in online and offline sales, events, promotions, and activities.

Spongecell allows marketers to further spread and track peer-to-peer communications within Facebook's community of 58 million active users.

Events from any Spongecell-powered calendar, website or blog can be easily added into individual Facebook profiles.

With the Spongecell-hosted Facebook application, marketers can even track comments made regarding their event.

"Online communities are where consumers 'live' and connect, and it's a natural environment for marketers to communicate with their audience more organically and efficiently," Marc Guldimann, CEO, Spongecell, said in a press release. "The extension of the Spongecell application to Facebook is an obvious next step as many brands are seeking to engage people online and on social networks. Our customers use our software as a way to drive people to take action -- from attending an event to buying a ticket to purchasing merchandise.”

"Because our software is platform-agnostic and can be integrated with many different forms of media, we empower our customers to engage their audience anywhere including on their mobile devices, MS Outlook, blogs or any web-based venue."

Spongecell provides real-time metrics for marketers and event promoters. Reports show how the event information spreads via widgets, links, invitation forwards, SMS reminder and the like.

With Spongecell, marketers can send out individual or mass communications about relevant news or events based on past viewing preferences. By segmenting audiences based on media preference and historical interaction, people are informed about relevant content that interests them, and are more likely to continue to spread the information virally.

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Anil Sharma is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

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