• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 20, 2013

Social services startup Gigya on Monday is expected to announce the addition of 21 social and marketing tech partners to its NEXUS Partner Ecosystem.

Launched late last year, NEXUS is designed to make millions of social data points accessible to brands through marketing automation tools.

With its new partners -- including Marketo, Sailthru, Livefyre, and Disqus -- Gigya says it is better positioned to help clients capture and use social and on-site behavioral data to power hyper-targeted email campaigns.

The end goal, said Patrick Salyer, CEO of Gigya, is “becoming a social data hub for businesses.”

Put another way, Gigya is hoping to give businesses more ways to market their products and services with social network data from Facebook, Google’s G+ and LinkedIn.

No longer a niche play, social media has secured its position as key to many marketing strategies -- and it’s no wonder considering that Facebook recently surpassed Google as the top driver of traffic to portals like Yahoo and MSN, according to Compete.
 
Founded in 2006, Gigya has raised over $45 million from Condé Nast parent Advance Publications, Adobe, Mayfield Fund, Benchmark Capital, and DAG Ventures.

With clients like Verizon, ABC, and Pepsi, Gigya estimates that its technology touches more than 1 billion users every month.

Gigya is also slated to announce integration with Backplane Protocol, allowing Gigya’s suite of social plug-ins to more easily communicate with other applications on Web sites. All of Gigya’s product lines -- including User Management 360, Social Plugins, and Gamification -- can now connect with any other Backplane compliant on-site technology.

For example, now sites that use Livefyre, Disqus or other Backplane compliant commenting systems can leverage Gigya’s Social Login to power authentication on those commenting systems. By allowing users to comment using their real social identities, sites can reduce comment “trolling” as well as increase sharing and referral traffic, according to Gigya.