• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 26, 2011

Sociable Labs secured $7 million in Series "B" funding led by Battery Ventures, along with Series "A" lead investor Javelin Venture Partners. The investment accompanies the official launch of its platform to help online retailers increase referral traffic and sales using social graph technology.

Sociable Labs, initially funded and incubated by Facebook in 2010, began selling its social commerce software through a beta program earlier this year to online brands such as Backcountry.com, Rue La La, Chegg and AEG Live. About 25 companies got a piece of the small Facebook fund, totaling about $10 million, according to Social Labs founder Nisan Gabbay. Approximately 700 companies applied.

Those that received funding were pulled together for a crash course on building out the Facebook platform and the benefits of tying into the social graph, Gabbay explains. The results manifested in a business plan to build technology that helps companies drive sales and referral traffic from social.

The latest cash infusion will help Sociable Labs double the size of its engineering team, as well as market and sell the service. For instance, Darby Williams recently joined Sociable Labs from PowerReviews to lead marketing. The company also will build out its product line. "We will add more compelling social applications to add to the suite," Gabbay said.

One of the biggest focuses points to tying Facebook open graph data to ecommerce services. For example, it means mining data about Fans of companies like Kenneth Cole to pull into the brand's ecommerce site.  

Sociable Labs claims to deliver conversion rates up to five times higher than a Facebook Fan's  page traffic. It also claims to increase social sharing on-site by up to 20 times, compared with traditional social actions, such as clicking a Like or Share button. This increase in sharing typically drives traffic back to brand Web sites that convert up to 300% higher compared with Facebook Fan page traffic.