Salesforce Buys Social Media Monitoring Company Radian6 For $326 Million

Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

Cloud computing giant Salesforce.com has acquired social media monitoring company Radian6 for approximately $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock, net of cash. In addition, approximately $10 million in stock and $4 million in cash will be issued to Radian6′s founders (subject to vesting conditions over two years).

Radian6 helps clients like Dell, GE, Kodak and UPS monitor, analyze and engage in ‘hundreds of millions’ of social media conversations. Salesforce argues that the acquisition of the company will enable it to enhance all of its products, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com.

Commented Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce:

With Radian6, salesforce.com is gaining the technology and market leader in social media monitoring. We see this as a huge opportunity. Not only will this acquisition accelerate our growth, it will extend the value of all of our offerings.

Founded in 2006, Radian6 helps companies monitor the social web (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, forums and so on) in order to provide actionable insights in real-time and thus enable its clients to effectively join conversations with customers and prospects.

The company just made an acquisition of its own, snapping up one of its resellers, 6Consulting, to establish a presence in the UK.

Salesforce expects the transaction to close in its fiscal second quarter ending July 31, 2011, subject to customary closing conditions.

Website: radian6.com
Launch Date: April 2006
Funding: $9M

Salesforce Radian6 helps companies listen to what people are saying about them online and engage in those conversations across the social web. From blogs and comments to multimedia, boards, forums and communities like Twitter, Radian6 gathers the discussions happening online and gives businesses the ability to analyze, manage, track, and report on their social media monitoring and engagement efforts. Radian6 provides the social media monitoring platform for marketing, communications and customer support professionals. The company’s flexible dashboard enables monitoring all...

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Company: Salesforce
Website: salesforce.com
Launch Date: 1999
IPO: February 7, 2004, NYSE:CRM

Salesforce is an enterprise cloud computing company that provides business software on a subscription basis. The company is best known for its on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions. Salesforce was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, and went public in June 2004. Salesforce has been a pioneer in developing enterprise platforms through its innovative AppExchange directory of on-demand applications, and its Force.com “Platform as a Service” (PaaS) API for extending Salesforce.

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