Strands Acquires Expensr and Launches moneyStrands, a Personal Money Management Solution

Strands Acquires Expensr and Launches moneyStrands, a Personal Money
Management Solution

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Strands
(http://strands.com/), a leading developer of social recommendation
technologies, today announced the launch of moneyStrands
(https://money.strands.com/), a personal money management solution, and the
acquisition of Expensr (https://www.expensr.com/), a leading online personal
finance application, for an undisclosed sum.
This marks the first step towards Strands' vision of applying its
personalization technologies to new areas. Following with its mission of
helping people discover new online content, services and products, Strands is
now extending its social recommendation technology to help people find the
best ways to save money and invest.
Currently in private beta testing, moneyStrands is an online money
management solution that allows users to aggregate their online financial
information in one place, providing them with an instant snapshot of all their
finances. With moneyStrands, users can anonymously compare themselves to
others with similar traits, such as demographics.
Key features of moneyStrands:
1.- Powered by Strands' social recommendation technology
(http://bizsolutions.strands.com/home.sbs), moneyStrands provides
users with the best personalized recommendations possible, helping
them find new ways to save money and invest.

2.- Tailored versions for Blackberry, iPhone and Nokia (S60) browsers, so
that the service can be used on mobile devices just as easily as it
can be used on computers.

3.- A powerful widget platform, enables maximum customization with minimum
set-up time.

In order to ensure industry best practices are followed, moneyStrands
benefits from Strands' ties with BBVA
(http://www.bbva.com/TLBB/tlbb/jsp/esp/home/index.jsp?rf=), one of the world's
largest financial institutions. BBVA, a strategic investor in Strands ($24M
invested in December 2007) (http://www.mystrands.com/corp/investors.vm), is a
financial services group with more than $783 billion in total assets, 42
million customers in 40 countries and a market capitalization of approximately
$85 billion.
Expensr Acquisition
Expensr is a free online application that takes an innovative approach to
personal finance, combining social networking with financial management. In
addition to giving users the ability to manage all of their accounts in one
place, Expensr provides analysis tools that let users categorize their
spending and track changes over time; as well as budgeting tools to help users
plan for future expenses. Users can also compare their spending habits with
relevant sub-groups (e.g. students) within the Expensr community to see how
their expenses match with their peers.
Part of Strands' vision is to help people to improve their online lives by
discovering relevant new content, services and products based on their tastes
and empowering them to manage all of this in one place. Strands is currently
building technologies to make this vision a reality and will have additional
announcements in the coming months.
"Our focus is on helping people manage their online lives and expand their
horizons through the Web," said Francisco J Martin, Strands CEO. "We see
personal finance as a key part of our overall vision, and we look forward to
the feedback from the moneyStrands beta testers. Expensr has an innovative
approach to the personal finance space, and we're happy to bring its
entrepreneurial spirit to Strands."
About Strands
Strands develops technologies to better understand people's tastes and
help them discover new things they will like. Strands has created a social
recommendation engine that provides real-time recommendations of products and
services through computers, mobile phones and other Internet-connected
devices. The company's current offering includes the online and mobile music
social recommendation tool MyStrands, and the MyStrands Social Player. In the
future, this will expand to apply Strands' social recommendation engine to
other content areas, to help users discover new things beyond the
entertainment space.
About Expensr
Expensr is a free online personal finance application, founded in 2006 by
Reman Child and Shawn Gupta, which enables users to easily track their
personal finances. Expensr takes advantage of collective financial trend data
to allow users to compare their spending habits to relevant sub-groups within
the community. In September 2007, the company was named one of Business 2.0
magazine's 'Top 10 Disruptors.'
SOURCE Strands

Peter Gray of LEWIS PR, +1-415-992-4400, strands@lewispr.com, for Strands