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OnSwipe Raises $1M for Insanely Simple Tablet Publishing PlatformNEW YORK --(Business Wire)-- OnSwipe, a new platform for tablet publishing and advertising, today announced it has raised $1M in funding. Investment firms Spark Capital, Betaworks (News - Alert) and ENIAC Ventures (a seed investor in mobile ad network AdMob) participated in the round, as did angel investors Dharmesh Shah (co-founder and CTO of Hubspot), Jennifer Lum (former vice president at Quattro and co-founder of Apricot Capital), Roy Rodenstein (founder and EVP of Going.com), and Wayne Chang (creator of file sharing network i2hub). The funding will be used to fuel the growth of OnSwipe's platform, which enables any website to instantly be transformed into a native HTML5 app experience via the browser on any touch enabled device. OnSwipe addresses a growing industry need with tablet use on the rise. There will be 50 million tablet users worldwide by the end of 2012, according to a recent Forrester (News - Alert) estimate, five times more than the current user base. This presents a great opportunity for publishers, hundreds of which already have signed on with OnSwipe. "Pick up any magazine and notice the careful focus on typography, design, and photography. We believe we can take that same design philosophy to the touch-enabled Web with OnSwipe and tablets," said Jason L. Baptiste, OnSwipe co-founder and CEO, nd author with Penguin Group. "That is where we think the future of publishing is going. In our view, media spending online has been held back due to poor publishing and advertising quality on the Web. With OnSwipe, we enable publishers to deliver quality design reminiscent of magazine publishing." "We are betting on the Web as a platform. OnSwipe allows publishers to make their content available through all devices, be it iOS, Android, BlackBerry (News - Alert), etc., without the time and expense of developing a native app for each," said Andres Barreto, OnSwipe co-founder. "Publishing is no longer about reaching just the desktop or laptop website user; publishers now need to think about connecting with users of all touch-enabled devices," said Alex Finkelstein, general partner at Spark Capital. "It's about making content beautiful and engaging across all devices, and the OnSwipe platform is providing that ability to publishers of all sizes." "OnSwipe is easy to use - in fact, Betaworks CEO John Borthwick (News - Alert) was the first customer of the product. And when publishers can start to use OnSwipe to incorporate social data and sharing through the platform, things will get much more interesting." said Andy Weissman, COO at Betaworks. Finkelstein will join the OnSwipe board of directors. About OnSwipe OnSwipe is a platform that makes it insanely easy for publishers of all sizes to make their content and advertising a beautiful experience on touch-enabled devices via the web browser. To learn more about OnSwipe visit http://www.OnSwipe.com. About Spark Capital Spark Capital is a venture capital firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. with investments focused on the conflux of the media, entertainment and technology industries. Over the last decade, the Spark team has been instrumental in the development of new markets and market leaders such as Akamai (News - Alert) Technologies, Twitter, 5Min, and Tumblr. For more information, visit www.sparkcapital.com
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