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Twitter Launches #FollowMe, another partnership with Portland Startup Vizify

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OregonLive.com/TheOregonian, Twitter Launches #FollowMe, another partnership with Portland Startup Vizify >>

Vizify, a Portland startup that creates graphical representations of users' online identities, has a new partnership with Twitter that collects standout messages, images and video clips from a user's social media feeds and packages them into a slick, quick movie.

It's called #FollowMe – Twitter showed it off last night at a program on Turner Television called the "NBA Social Media Awards." The service creates a customizable highlight reel that serves as an online calling card. (NBA stars Kobe Bryant and Stephen Curry already have their own videos.)

The videos can be posted in a social media feed, or directly into a Vizify biography. (Soundtracks for the videos come from Friendly Music, a partnership between another Portland company -- Rumblefish -- and YouTube that licenses songs for online video.)

This is the second time Vizify has partnered with Twitter. At the end of last year, they jointly created a "Year in Review" feature to showcase high points from users' 2012 Tweets.

Vizify didn't get paid for that work, settling for the exposure from a high-profile partnership. But Todd Silverstein, CEO of the seven-person company, said Vizify was paid for this new deal (he didn't say how much.)

To date, Vizify has created more than 250,000 online bios, drawing from profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The company has been exploring premium features as a revenue source, but the two Twitter deals has it thinking about other opportunities.

"There are a number of different avenues for us that can build some real, positive, revenue streams," Silverstein said. He said Vizify is still evaluating various options, and being judicious about its next steps.

"We're going to continue to be really selective an careful about who we partner with," he said."

The company participated in both the Portland Seed Fund business incubator and the Seattle chapter of the startup accelerator TechStars.

It raised $1.46 million from well-connected angel investors, including Tim Draper of the investment firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Voyager Capital's Bill McAleer. Silverstein said some of those early backers have invested more in the company, but he declined to say just how much.

 06/13/13 >> go there
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