Involver, a San Francisco startup that runs marketing campaigns on social media sites for individuals and corporate customers, plans to more than double in size by the end of next year.
The 75-person company will be at around 200 workers by Dec. 2011, said CEO Rahim Fazal. That number will include between 70 and 80 engineers who develop software using Ruby on Rails, the open source Web development language, up from about 35 engineers now.
"We're evangelizing Ruby for commercial development," Fazal said.
Most of its workers will be added in its home city, but Involver will also hire in its other hubs in New York and Austin, Texas.
The company is hiring in four broad categories of workers, according to Fazal: "core product innovation," meaning developers, engineers and product designers; "customer excellence," meaning product support, broadly defined; "business development and sales"; and "marketing and thought leadership."
That last category includes a new type of job called community manager, according to Involver vice president of marketing Jascha Kaykas-Wolff.
These workers manage the communities that grow up on commercial Web pages on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and iTunes.
One of the company's most high-profile social media campaigns was a customized Facebook marketing application for music label Sony BMG on behalf of the singer Alicia Keys.
The application ran a marketing program with included promotions such as free concert tickets, free albums and special album releases for fans who signed up on Keys' Facebook fan page.
The number of fans on the page doubled to 2 million from 1 million in one year after Involver launched the marketing application for it, Fazal said.
"We deliver the most relevant relationships" to customers, he said, adding that the company also uses data analysis tools that track consumers' Web spending and behavior.
Involver's revenue has doubled, compared to the previous quarter's revenue, for five consecutive quarters, said Fazal, 28, who sold his first company for $1.5 million when he still a senior in high school in Vancouver, BC.
Involver recently filed a document with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise an $8 million funding round. It had raised $7 million as of Sept. 22.
Write to John Shinal
