• GigaOm, Wednesday, June 27, 2012 11:54 AM

After several quiet years, link technology startup LinkSmart is stepping into the spotlight. Founded by former DailyCandy CEO Pete Sheinbaum back in 2009, the company has a plan to use in-text links to help Web publishers optimize traffic and improve reader engagement. The startup has already raised $4.7 million -- from the Foundry Group and Sutter Hill Ventures -- and has forged relationships with some top (yet still unidentified) publishers.

“At DailyCandy, Sheinbaum said, he learned how valuable in-text links could be for driving traffic to certain sections of a Web site and keeping users engaged,” GigOm reports. “But, for the most part, publishers’ only option has been to hand-code the links, which makes updating and changing the links in real-time a laborious, unscalable effort.” Sheinbaum explains: “What we’re trying to do is give publishers an analytics tool to understand what’s going on in the text and provide not just data, but insights into how to optimize their traffic based on whatever business goals they have.”

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