A hefty cash infusion is fueling a growth spurt at MyStrands, a Corvallis-based music-recommendation software developer that is making inroads into the social-networking and video arenas.

On Monday the company announced it had raised $25 million in new private investment led by Spanish media mogul Antonio Asensio, bringing total investment in the privately held firm to $31 million.

The beefed-up bankroll enables MyStrands to continue to grow while remaining independent, said Gabriel Aldamiz-echevarria, the company's vice president for communications.

"This is a big step for us," he said. "We can do many things that we were not able to do before."

One thing the company plans to do with its newfound capital is hire more people, especially software engineers and business-development specialists, Aldamiz-echevarria said.

MyStrands plans to add 25 jobs in Corvallis, where 28 of its 50 employees currently work. Most of the rest are in Spain, the home of company founder and CEO Francisco Martin.

The jobs will be added over the next several months, but the interviewing process is already under way.

"We're hiring," Aldamiz-echevarria said. "Right now we're looking for people in Corvallis."

John Sechrest, an economic-development specialist with the Corvallis-Benton Chamber Coalition, welcomed the news but added that MyStrands could face stiff competition in the hunt for software engineers in the mid-valley.

"With companies like InsightsNow, Tripod Data Systems and IGT all hiring, it makes for a pretty hot market for programmers," he said. "All of the people I know of that are doing programming are growing."

Sechrest noted that the local pool of computer programmers has shrunk over the years, with Silicon Valley powerhouse Hewlett-Packard relocating jobs in its calculator and personal-computing divisions and homegrown success stories such as Rogue Wave Software leaving town just as they were beginning to grow.

To keep the latest wave of growth at home, Sechrest said, the Chamber Coalition is working with local software companies to organize a hiring fair to bring more programmers to Corvallis.

"MyStrands is a real opportunity for us," Sechrest said.

The company has grown steadily since 2003, when Martin, a Spanish software developer, founded the business in Corvallis while doing postdoctoral work at Oregon State University.

MyStrands started out as a Web-based music recommendation service that used collaborative filtering technology to help people discover new music based on what they were already listening to, as well as manage their digital music collections by creating playlists.

Along the way its services expanded their reach from personal computers to mobile phones and other Internet-connected devices, all the while building an online community of users around the world who can track each other's musical choices in real time and engage in "virtual parties" through their MyStrands membership.

Now the company is making a similar move into video content.

"We believe there is a huge opportunity, a huge need for digital video," Aldamiz-echevarria said. "Digital recommendation allows you to both discover and manage content."

With the glut of audio and visual information available online, the new buzzword is "content personalization," and that's what MyStrands is striving to provide, Aldamiz-echevarria said.

That may also explain Asensio's keen interest in the company. The 25-year-old entrepreneur is the owner of Grupo Zeta, Spain's third-largest media conglomerate, with assets that include 10 newspapers and 16 magazines. Print media everywhere are looking for ways to maintain their advertising base in the digital realm, and MyStrands is doing research and development work in that direction.

"Advertising is going to go digital, and we are making efforts to be able to offer personalized advertising," Aldamiz-echevarria said. "That is going to be one of the big areas for MyStrands in the future."

Bennett Hall is the business editor for the Gazette-Times. He can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.