The software company Spiceworks has a small audience at small and midsize businesses that technology advertisers are eager to reach: the information technology managers at those firms.

Spiceworks started in 2006 in Austin, Texas, in response to complaints among information technology professionals about the lack of a single application to manage their company networks and the hours they spent scanning Google for solutions to technology problems.

"We wanted to create a wonderful software product for IT managers that was simple, quick to download and easy to learn and use and with a fun social networking twist," said Jay Hallberg, a Spiceworks co-founder. Spiceworks created downloadable software that helps technology professionals manage, track and report on the software and hardware on their company's network, all under one application.

Spiceworks has become a popular destination for corporate technology people - more than 600,000 information technology managers - to help one another with problems, and share their favorite products and services.

"Spiceworks provides a concentrated audience that Google or another search engine can't," said Megan Lueders, vice president for marketing at a Spiceworks advertiser, LifeSize Communications, a provider of high-definition video products.

"With Google, your prospect could be anyone from a student to a competitor to a chief technology officer. But with Spiceworks, you know you're talking to an IT professional."

Last year the company attracted 72 advertisers, up from 24 in 2007. Advertisers have included Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Sony. During the same period, the company's user base more than doubled.

"Spiceworks has a unique vantage point that Google and trade magazines don't have: It's used only by IT professionals and while they're doing their work, so the data and targeted audience Spiceworks has is unprecedented," said Emily Riley, senior analyst with Forrester Research. "Marketers know exactly what products users have, what they need and what they're considering."

Taking cues from social networking sites, Spiceworks recently introduced a feature modeled on Facebook's news feed that offers technology news, community discussions and product and vendor updates. It also helps users track changes to the hardware and software in their networks. The company also unveiled a Twitter- like option that lets users share updates about themselves with other users.

Brian Rousseau, information technology manager for Nobis Engineering, an environmental engineering and consulting company in Massachusetts, said Spiceworks was like "an IT library."

"Before Spiceworks, I'd have an IT problem I couldn't solve and would spend hours on Google trying to find the answer, but then I'd waste so much time searching through result pages," he said.

Spiceworks users have rated and reviewed more than 15,000 technology products and services and created more than 400 professional groups on technology and regional topics.

The Spiceworks platform allows advertisers to communicate directly with clients. Some users have helped design ads.

"HP's next round of creative development for Spiceworks is based on the users' ratings and feedback on our ads," said Lauren Belliveau, media buyer for Hewlett-Packard's small and midsize businesses at DraftFCB, a unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies. "I could even see the Spiceworks community influencing our products in the near future, because at the end of the day, they're the ones buying our products."

The company recently began offering event sponsorships to advertisers. The first event, called SpiceWorld, was held in Austin last October at one of the city's movie theaters and included panel discussions. Microsoft and CDW were sponsors of the conference.

"We have all these users who connect with one another online, so we thought, 'Why don't we bring them all together so they can connect with us and each other in person?'" Hallberg said.

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

(c) 2009 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.