Alvenda Strengthens Executive Team with Jamie Thingelstad as COO and CTO

Minneapolis, MN – January 28, 2010 – Alvenda, Inc., a distributed commerce network merchants use to create millions of opportunities for selling on Facebook and through advertising media, announced today that Jamie Thingelstad has been named chief operating officer (COO) and chief technology officer (CTO) of Alvenda.

With extensive experience in technology, digital media and publishing, Thingelstad will provide strategic operational and technology guidance to enable Alvenda to efficiently handle its rapid growth in clients and products. From an operational perspective, he will streamline Alvenda’s enablement process to reduce the time to deployment for new clients. On the technology front, Jamie will scale up Alvenda’s technology platform to support thousands of merchants.

Alvenda was the first company to enable merchants to sell directly from within Facebook, and continues to build innovative technologies at the convergence of social networking, ecommerce and advertising.

“The majority of future online sales will happen offsite. Customers will be able to shop with brands wherever they happen to be whether they're on YouTube, a favorite blogger Web site, or in Facebook. Alvenda’s customers are moving commerce forward to these touch points and are generating remarkable sales results,” said Wade Gerten, CEO, Alvenda.

Alvenda launched its first product in May 2009. Since then, Alvenda has been rapidly adding dozens of new customers including some of the top merchants in the U.S. such as 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Brooks Brothers, Hallmark, and Mark.

“We are thrilled to have Jamie join our executive team,” said Gerten. “Jamie’s publisher domain knowledge will help us better understand the needs of our publisher partners. The breadth and depth of his technology expertise will ensure our systems can efficiently support our rapidly growing technology demands and his strong operations experience will be instrumental in simplifying our processes and accelerating customer deployments.”

“Alvenda has the clearest and most attractive value proposition of any software developer I've seen in several years,” said Thingelstad. “Alvenda has identified an unmet need and has created a platform that is tremendously exciting. I am thrilled to join the Alvenda team and am focused on increasing Alvenda’s ability to scale to meet the needs of thousands of partners.”

Prior to joining Alvenda, Thingelstad was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Split Rock Partners where he evaluated opportunities in next generation digital media, social media and platform services. Previously, he was vice president and chief technology officer of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, a leading provider of financial and investment news through sites such as the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch and Barrons. During his tenure, the network properties grew substantially and several new product offerings were introduced.

Previously, Thingelstad was chief technology officer for the Enterprise Media Group of Dow Jones where he oversaw the development efforts for Dow Jones Newswires, Dow Jones Indexes and other business services offered by the company. Thingelstad was founding chief technology officer of BigCharts, Inc. through its acquisition by CBS MarketWatch in 1999, becoming the CTO for CBS MarketWatch. BigCharts was a pioneer in delivering real-time financial tools and information via the Web and provided services to the majority of top financial services firms. MarketWatch was subsequently acquired by Dow Jones, which was then acquired by News Corporation. Thingelstad was also one of the founding CTOs of the Online Publishers Association Technology Committee.

Thingelstad attended the University of Minnesota, Institute of Technology.

About Alvenda
Alvenda operates a distributed commerce network that creates millions of opportunities for selling on Facebook and through advertising media. Alvenda enables a merchant’s customers to shop and sell with them across millions of locations on the Web. With Alvenda, everybody sells! Alvenda was founded in 2008 by executives with domain expertise in retail software, online retail marketing, and interactive advertising industries. In July of 2009, Alvenda earned the distinction of launching the industry’s first store on Facebook with 1-800-FLOWERS.COM. Alvenda has been featured in Advertising Age, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, New York Times, WWD, Bloomberg TV, and Techcrunch. Alvenda was also named the grand prize winner of the 2009 Minnesota Cup. Alvenda is funded by Split Rock Venture Partners and is based in Minneapolis, MN. For more information on Alvenda, visit www.alvenda.com.

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