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

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May 30, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO, April 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Strands (), a leading developer of social recommendation technologies, today announced the launch of moneyStrands (), a personal money management solution, and the acquisition of Expensr (), a leading online personal <a href=’http://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
(), 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 (), one of the world’s largest financial institutions. BBVA, a strategic investor in Strands ($24M invested in December 2007) (), 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.’
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