StatusNet Inc announced today that it has closed another round of funding from First Mark Capital, BOLDstart Ventures, iNovia Capital and Montreal Start Up, bringing its total funding to date to $2.3 million. StatusNet, formerly Laconica, develops the open-source microblogging server that powers identi.ca and offers both hosted and on-premise enterprise microblogging solutions. The company also announced an addition to the StatusNet board: Scott Switzer – founder of open source ad platform, OpenX, angel investor and FirstMark Capital venture partner.
StatusNet CEO Evan Prodromou stated in a press release the company is building an enterprise sales and support team. “Our investors and partners have deep experience in enterprise and open source software that will help us during our next phase of growth,” he said.
Status updates and microblogging are the new must-have app for enterprises, and StatusNet has been a leader in the market. The company says it has several Fortune 1,000 customers, including Motorolaimpressed with StatusNet’s technology.
Although $2.3 million is small compared to the $30 million recently raised by Jive and the $60 million recently raised by Atlassian, it’s part of the larger trend of investors taking social enterprise seriously.
According to Box.net CEO Aaron Levie “enterprise software is sexy again.” Levie points out that enterprise information technology spending dwarfs online advertising spending. The US government alone is expected to spend $80 billion on IT in 2011, while online advertising is expected to do only $24.2 billion in business next year.
This is a big deal for IT managers, who will have far more enterprise collaboration choices to choose from as pressure to adopt new technologies increases from all areas of the enterprise.
