Facebook marketing app Fanzy has raised another $550K from KIMA Ventures, OREFA (Jacques-Antoine Granjon’s fund) and Start Capital (a fund founded by Paolo Rubatto) to help brands on Facebook reward fans for their engagement. Co-founded by Tuhin Roy, who previously worked on the Digital Media Group, and Jeff Marois, who manages the teams development center in Paris, Fanzy looks a lot like Klout in its vision; however, the two seem to part ways in execution.
While Klout uses its “Klout Score” to measure influencers, Fanzy works on directly rewards fans on Facebook. Originally reported by VentureBeat, the founders say they have made sure they comply 100% with Facebook’s policy about paying fans for engagement, although it is not exactly clear how they are skirting this grey line.
Fanzy hopes to gamify social engagement – yeah, I know, that sounds like a lot of buzz words – and seems like it’s already working for current clients like Hotels.com, Nirvana, and the movie Drive. While it still remains to see that brands will receive enough value out of Fanzy’s marketing app to warrant paying for it, it’s good to see French business angels crossing the pond to invest in a San Francisco startup.