MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/27/12 -- Gigya, the leading provider of social infrastructure for business, today announced the hiring of outside consultant Jill Nissen, of Nissen Consulting, as the company's acting Chief Privacy Officer. As businesses continue looking for ways to leverage social data to reach their consumers, managing consumer social data responsibly has become a paramount issue affecting both consumers and businesses. In its efforts to help make social data collection and usage effective and transparent, Gigya hired Nissen to provide expert guidance to company executives and clients on consumer privacy regulations, laws, and best practices in the US and EU. Nissen, who holds a JD from Georgetown University Law Center, comes from an extensive background in consumer privacy. She was previously V.P. and Chief Policy Officer at Ning, where she set company-wide privacy strategy and advised executives on all global privacy matters. She then assumed the role of acting Chief Privacy Officer at Lucasfilm across all the company's divisions. Nissen was also appointed as one of 30 experts to the Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG) established by the United States Congress to analyze the state of online child safety.

In addition to advising Gigya and its clients on privacy laws and regulations, Nissen will act as a liaison to consumer privacy and online safety organizations to help the company stay updated on privacy concerns and to ensure social data capture is done transparently and clearly for users.

"Managing social data brings an enormous opportunity for marketers. But companies also have an obligation to be transparent in how they collect and use this data, and they must ensure that all privacy laws and regulations are adhered to," said Patrick Salyer, CEO of Gigya. "Bringing Jill Nissen on as our acting Chief Privacy Officer will make sure that we are consistently in-line with those regulations and that our clients are respecting the rights of consumers."

In addition to Nissen's onboarding, Gigya also announced the launch of two new product features under its User Management 360 system. The first, Social Compliance™, helps Gigya clients automatically conform to the provisions in the Terms of Service of the leading social networks regarding data collection, storage and transfer.

The second new product, Social Sync™, works to give Gigya clients real-time updates to social profile data. Social Sync™ works with Identity Storage to update user records when socially connected users change their Facebook profiles. For example, when a user who has logged into a Gigya client site with Facebook Social Login changes his or her relationship status on Facebook, that change will be automatically reflected in the respective user record in Identity Storage. Social Sync™ ensures that clients can understand and market to their users with absolute accuracy and efficiency.

"Gigya has been growing and developing at an incredible pace," Salyer said. "With Social Compliance™ and Social Sync™, we're helping our rapidly expanding roster of clients make effective and responsible use of consumer social data."

Social Compliance™ and Social Sync™ are automatically implemented for any clients using Gigya's Social Login and Identity Storage products. More information can be found here: www.gigya.com

About Gigya:
Gigya's mission is to socialize the rest of the web.

We provide websites with a complete social infrastructure that creates immersive social experiences for users and provides unparalleled customer insights for businesses.

Gigya equips businesses like ABC, Pepsi and Verizon with a comprehensive solution to socialize their online properties. Our technology enables seamless registration with Social Login and Registration-as-a-Service, increases traffic and time spent on-site via Social Plugins and Gamification and transforms marketing by leveraging permission-based social identity data.

Gigya works with more than 600 enterprises and touches more than one billion users per month. Our platform extracts the real value from social networks, empowering online businesses to attract, engage and understand users like never before.