Urturn Announces $13.4 Million Funding Round, Launches Mobile App

Urturn provides creative templates or “Expressions” for social media that shift the typical post and like exchange to an encouragement to take “your turn” and express yourself by combining audio and video elements in a shareable, postable form. It’s been used for a number of music marketing campaigns since they started out in late 2011. Today they have two big announcements, the raising of a funding round of $13.4 million and the launch of their first mobile app.

Urturn launched in 2011 as Webdoc, a more complicated offering that provided graphics, audio and video options for the creation of an embeddable, shareable HTML5 widget. However there seems to be a real limit to most people’s desire to start from a blank canvas and Urturn has gradually simplified the offering focusing on templates that allow you to take such simple actions as choosing a photo and a song to combine in a “music postcard,” as shown below:

Apparently this focus, that led to the relaunch of Webdoc as Urturn in January, is working out well. Musicians continue to use Urturn for marketing campaigns with new projects in the works. And now Urturn has reached a major milestone.

$13.4 Million Funding Round

I spoke yesterday with Co-founder Vincent Borel who discussed today’s announcement of a $13.4 million funding round, the first public round of investment in Urturn. He was quite excited about the news which includes $10.7 million from Balderton Capital.

When asked what he’d do with all that money, he said they would continue to do what they do which, though it includes marketing campaigns and an onsite network, primarily focuses on giving web users tool for quick self-expression.

Launch of iOS App

One way they’re making that possible is with a new iOS app that should be a good match for their Expressions or template approach to combining creative elements. It might also be a more appealing entry way to using Urturn than a desktop environment.

Since a common approach used in Expressions is to take or upload a photo as part of the mix, the ability to take a mobile pic and create an Expression at that point should be a strong combo. With creation and sharing happening on the go, that will make Urturn more appealing to users as well as to those with marketing interests.

Next Up: An API

Borel said one of their next major launches is an API that will open up the creation of Expressions to third parties. For example, it will faciliate creating new templates that can then be shared, reused and become part of what will ideally be an ecosystem of interconnected platforms and parts from Urturn to social networks to websites.

But Borel reiterated that the focus of Urturn was on the users and their desire to create. He wants to see Urturn maintain its openness to all users and to combine self-expression with immediate action. And now Urturn has the funding to take their Expressions to another level.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.