The Arizona Republic ran a short piece on Arkayne’s recent press release in their business section today.  The articles main focus was on Arkayne’s recent investment announcement, where $1 million was raised with about 80 percent coming from Arizona.  Read the whole article below:

A Scottsdale startup’s interactive marketing technology is garnering investors’ attention. Arkayne Inc. recently closed a $1 million round of funding that included local angel investor group Arizona Technology Investor Forum and other financiers.  Formed in late 2008 by entrepreneurs Nicholas Aretakis and Paul Kenjora, the company developed software that tries to help retailers and other businesses generate more online sales by measuring their site traffic against that of competitors.

The diagnostic tool will “crawl a client site (and) . . . we can compare their content . . . with their target audience, with partners, resellers and . . . the best performing competitors in their class,” said Aretakis, Arkayne’s CEO.

Individuals involved with Arizona Technology Investor Forum provided about $250,000 in funding, Aretakis said. He raised the rest of the financing from friends, family and other business partners.  ”I wanted to raise the funds in Arizona,” he said, noting that about 80 percent it came from local investors.”

More From Arkayne

• Arkayne in the Phoenix Business Journal
• The Arkayne Ipod Giveaway Results Are In!
• Got Funds? ShopIgniter And Arkayne
• Arkayne Gets $1 Million Seed Round For Link Recommendation Plug-In
• Getting Noticed in the Community

Arkayne Recommends

• Ground Control featured in Arizona Republic (Arizona Coffee)
• In the World of Startups, (Stealthmode)
• No Pun In The News (No Pun Intended)

Arkayne Inc. has received $1 million in angel funds, bucking the trend of technology startups struggling to find capital during the recession.

With help from the Arizona Technology Investor Forum, the Scottsdale company raised about 80 percent of the funds from in-state sources. The money will help the fledgling interactive marketing agency as it looks to link Web pages via a social network.

“I’m a Silicon Valley and New York guy, but we wanted to do this locally,” said Arkayne CEO Nicholas Aretakis. “I’ve been involved with ATIF, and the talk has been about getting investment locally.”

The company went looking for financing last spring, just as the market bottomed out. Officials secured about $250,000 from investors at ATIF and got the rest through other angels.

Arkayne may have been at the leading edge as other, more polished deals come through the pipeline, said Paul Winandy, executive director of ATIF.

“With the drop in (venture capital) funding for seed/early-stage ventures, we are seeing true Series A-level deals,” he said. “So Arkayne was good, but it was pre-revenue and still building its technology. The bet was on the Arkayne team, very strong, and the market growing rapidly.”

That money came during a stretch where little to no venture capital or angel investing was going on in Arizona because of the national financial meltdown.

About $116 million went into VC deals in 2009, but angel funding statistics are much more difficult to track.

“I think even if you had the best business plan, it was still difficult to raise money in late 2008 and early 2009,” Aretakis said.

Arkayne’s focus is developing technology to interweave Web pages to create a network similar to online social networks. The company’s software was developed by founder and Chief Technology Officer Paul Kenjora and a handful of other designers. It allows users to link blogs and social postings to other blogs, social networks and sites to drive page views and content consumption.

The company has an application for bloggers and now is focusing on large companies to help them create better brand awareness and drive traffic to their Web sites, Aretakis said.

That niche may be a good one as more companies invest in their online presence.

For the first time, U.S. companies are expected to spend more this year on online marketing (about $119 billion) than on print media ($111 billion), according to Outsell Inc., a consulting firm based in Burlingame, Calif.

Arkayne’s commercial project launched in October. Aretakis said it takes two to four months to get a network built, so the first efforts are just starting to come online. Arkayne is expected to start developing revenue streams this month, and to be profitable by the end of the third quarter.

The investors probably will fund Arkayne’s operation and growth through this year. Aretakis said the company may begin looking at a Series A offering in the third quarter. Officials would like to keep it Arizona-based, though he said that offering may include out-of-state investments.

http://www.bizjournals.com/

More From Arkayne

• Arkayne Mentioned In The Arizona Republic

Arkayne Recommends

• The death of business cards? (CNNMoney)
• How to cash in on the census (CNNMoney)
• The business case for a national broadband policy (CNNMoney)

Check out the photos below:

Congratulations to Tyler, and a big thanks to everyone who participated in our first contest. Keep an eye out for upcoming Arkayne giveaways!

More From Arkayne

• Video: Make Your Blog Social with Arkayne
• The Arkayne Ipod Giveaway Results Are In!
• Arkayne Gets $1 Million Seed Round For Link Recommendation Plug-In
• Ignite Phoenix is Back!
• Got Funds? ShopIgniter And Arkayne

Arkayne Recommends

• Building free homes for wounded vets - CNN.com (CNN)
• Small Businesses: Banks Not Lending (HuffingtonPost)
• Titans agree to terms with veteran corner Hood (CBSSports)

ADOTAS recently published an article about ShopIgniter and Arkayne’s recent close of funding. For those of you that are unaware of what ShopIgniter does, they’ve created a product that delivers an extensible, cloud-based ecommerce solution integrating store management, merchandising and product content across physical retail, branded web site and the social web. Or simply put, ShopIgniter allows your business to live within Facebook and Twitter.

You can see the original article below:

ADOTAS – Social media and ecommerce integration is an idea venture capitalist are opening their checkbooks to: ShopIgnite garnered $3 million from a Series A round of funding led by Madrona Venture Group

In addition, Madrona partner and former Yahoo! VP Matt Compton is grabbing the reigns as CEO of the startup. Madrona Managing Partner, Tom Alberg, who also sits on Amazon’s board of directors, will take a seat on ShopIgnite’s board.

The company’s platform allows retailers, wholesalers and brands to merchandise products on Facebook and hunt for customers on Twitter, as well as manage their online store functionality through a straightforward dashboard. ShopIgnite claims that its services boost online sales by as much as 30%.

In other funding news, interactive marketing software developer Arkayne scooped up more than $1 million in an initial round of Angel funding. The company’s Plugin SaaS offering links site visitors from one page to others within a single site or customer-designated network of sites by displaying relevant links. Arkayne will launch another product in the spring as well as an upgrade for Plugin.

Via Gavin Dunaway at ADOTAS.com

More From Arkayne

• Lunch with Arkayne iPod Giveaway Winner Tyler Hurst
• Arkayne Mentioned In The Arizona Republic
• Arkayne in the Phoenix Business Journal
• Ignite Phoenix is Back!

Arkayne Recommends

• Social Media and Search Optimization Integration (seowizardry)
• NCAA Tournament 2010: Live Streams, Brackets, Mobile, and More (Mashable)
• Charter Schools and Student Performance (The Wall Street Journal)

Arkayne recently closed on a an Angel round of funding, and PaidContent.org was gracious enough to mention us in a recent article of theirs.

You can see the original article below:

Arkayne, which makes a plug-in designed to automatically add related links to web pages, has raised $1 million in an angel round. The plug-in scans all of the posts on a website in order to automatically suggest related items that a visitor should read. A version for bloggers with “moderate to low publication rates” is free, while Arkyane charges enterprise customers.

Arkayne says it’s also set to announce a second product soon which is “aimed at giving businesses ultimate visibility into their content strategy and how it stacks ups to their competitors, partners and target audiences.” Sounds ambitious.

The startup says it will use the new cash—which comes from the Arizona Technology Technology Investor Forum, among others—to “fund its quickly growing team” and “build out the organization’s infrastructure.”  More on the Arkayne blog.

Via: Joseph Tartakoff at PaidContent.org

Twitter: @JosephTartakoff

More From Arkayne

• Lunch with Arkayne iPod Giveaway Winner Tyler Hurst
• Ignite Phoenix is Back!
• Arkayne Mentioned In The Arizona Republic

Arkayne Recommends

• $1.5 billion in housing help for unemployed, underwater - Feb. 19, 2010 (CNNMoney)
• Arkadium scores a million players for its first Facebook game (Venture Beat)
• Out: Blogging for dollars. In: Blogging for pennies (Venture Beat)

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Arkayne, Inc., a developer of interactive marketing software that helps businesses improve their online performance and content strategy, today announces it has closed its initial round of Angel funding totaling just over $1 million. The seed round was funded by seasoned technology entrepreneurs and investors, including the Arizona Technology Investor Forum (ATIF). Arkayne plans to use the infusion of capital, along with revenue from early enterprise customers to fund its quickly growing team of technology, sales and marketing professionals, as well as build out the organization’s infrastructure.

“Arkayne is one of the more exciting ventures funded by ATIF and we’re looking forward to seeing great things from this company on the national stage.” “The Arkayne engine could not be a more timely solution for businesses that depend on their Web sites for monetization and it’s already showing success for major companies that live and die by their visitor numbers,” said Nicholas Aretakis, CEO of Arkayne. “Our early investors saw the huge potential and we were able to increase the offering and become 100 percent over-subscribed in a very challenging economic climate. We feel this initial infusion gives us the perfect spring board to get our first two products off the ground.”

The first stage investors were attracted to Arkayne’s suite of solutions because they give businesses a new way of assessing their content strategy for greater conversion and monetization. Arkayne’s Plugin, it’s first software as a service (SaaS) offering, works by linking site visitors from one Web page to others within a single Web site, or a customer designated network of sites, by displaying links that are relevant to what they are reading. This provides a more meaningful experience for site visitors, which makes them stay within single sites and networks longer, engage more, convert more often, and ultimately create higher value and monetization.

This spring, Arkayne will formally announce the general availability of another product, and an add-on to the Plugin, both designed for significantly improving online performance. One is aimed at giving businesses ultimate visibility into their content strategy and how it stacks ups to their competitors, partners and target audiences. The other augments the Plugin product by providing site owners, including business Web sites and professional marketers, the ability to easily monetize without the traditional advertising model.

“ATIF investors were impressed by the strong management team and technology talent at Arkayne. Their unique suite of products and ability to execute make for a compelling investment,” said Paul Winandy, Executive Director of ATIF. “Arkayne is one of the more exciting ventures funded by ATIF and we’re looking forward to seeing great things from this company on the national stage.”

Arkayne is measuring the successful results of its early customers and quickly building out its next two complementary solutions. The Arkayne management team is led by seasoned entrepreneur and technology veteran, Nicholas Aretakis. He and CTO and founder Paul Kenjora, who has a substantial background in software, complex data mining and IT development, are quickly building out the Arkayne team that is needed to support the fast growth already experienced by the company.

About Arkayne, Inc.

Arkayne, Inc. provides Internet marketing software that helps businesses improve their online marketing performance, generate more leads and convert a higher percentage of those leads into paying customers. Arkayne’s suite of software solutions includes tools that allow professional marketers, businesses and agencies to manage Web presence, content optimization, search engine optimization, blogging and social media, and content metrics. Based in Scottsdale, AZ, Arkayne can be found at http://www.arkayne.com.

Follow Arkayne on Twitter, Facebook, and the Arkayne blog:

http://blog.arkayne.com
http://twitter.com/arkayneinc
http://www.facebook.com/ArkayneInc

More From Arkayne

• Lunch with Arkayne iPod Giveaway Winner Tyler Hurst
• Arkayne Mentioned In The Arizona Republic
• Ignite Phoenix is Back!

Arkayne Recommends

• Lawyers, Looking to Launch a Blog? Read This First (The Wall Street Journal)
• KEO Marketing to present hands on social media training in Phoenix (KEO Marketing)
• Groupon founders launch $100M ‘Lightbank’ fund to seed Chicago startups (Venture Beat)

1. Arkayne: Social Integration With 1,000s Of New Users Monthly

2. Arkayne Recommendation Engine

3. Everything on the internet is free

4. Checking out Arkayne’s Cool Plugin

5. Plugged in With Arkayne

6. Arkayne’s Plugin for Bloggers

7. In search of the Best Related Posts Plugin for WordPress

And the results are in…

And the winner is tdhurst! Congratulations!  Tyler wrote us a wonderful review of the plugin, thanking us particularily for creating a great plugin and giving it away for free.  Thanks to everyone who participated in this giveaway, and Keep an eye out for more Arkayne blogger contests, who knows what we will give away next!

More From Arkayne

• Lunch with Arkayne iPod Giveaway Winner Tyler Hurst
• Arkayne Mentioned In The Arizona Republic
• Ignite Phoenix is Back!

Arkayne Recommends

• Are Managed Futures in the Cards for You? (The Wall Street Journal)
• How to cash in on the census (CNNMoney)
• Tree in the house 2 (CNN)

Over the past year a lot has changed here at Arkayne, thanks to outstanding customer feedback we have made a lot of changes, and the Arkayne Plugin is better than ever.  To show appreciation for all of the support we have received from the Blog Community, Arkayne will be giving away an iPod touch to one lucky blogger!  In order to qualify, all you need to do is write a blog post about your experience with The Arkayne Plugin, then tweet about it with the hash tag #ArkayneiPodGiveaway.  The winner will be chosen at random.

The iPod giveaway begins today and will go through Wednesday, February 26^th at Midnight.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: If you don’t already have the Arkayne Plugin installed on your blog, register and install the Arkayne Plugin by going here: http://www.arkayne.com/register

Step 2: Write a review of The Arkayne Plugin on your blog.

Step 3: Tweet a link to your blog post with the hash tag #ArkayneIpodGiveaway.

That’s it! You now have the ability to connect with other blogs and sites using Arkayne! If you have any questions you can contact the Arkayne support team on twitter @arkayneinc or at: http://www.arkayne.com/support

Cheers and Happy Blogging!

More From Arkayne

• Lunch with Arkayne iPod Giveaway Winner Tyler Hurst
• Arkayne Mentioned In The Arizona Republic
• Ignite Phoenix is Back!

Arkayne Recommends

• Add P2P Social Bookmarking To Your Pages (Aware Labs)
• Full Source To Instant RSS Portals Using Django (Aware Labs)
• How to build a sitemap (KEO Marketing)