Social Media Marketing Company Clickable Acquires Talkwheel

Talkwheel, a company that offers a unique way to visualize customer conversations, has been acquired by Clickable.

I last wrote about Talkwheel in 2014. The company aggregates the online conversation around a given company or topic in a circular format — it’s supposed to help you follow these often complicated and dispersed conversations. The format can then be embedded on a brand’s website, offering one place where users can catch up on and participate in the broader conversation.

Founder and CEO Jeff Harris said that Talkwheel has seen its revenue grow by about 400 percent annually over the past two years. At the same time, there’s been “a lot of consolidation going in the social media marketing space,” and Talkwheel began acquisition discussions with another company (not Clickable) in late 2015. Ultimately, Harris said Clickable was the better fit — he praised its listening and social media monitoring tools and said Talkwheel adds “that consumer-facing piece” to the Clickable platform.

The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Harris said it involved a mix of cash and equity, with Talkwheel continuing to function as an independent organization and product under the Clickable umbrella, while also looking for potential integrations. The entire nine-person Talkwheel team will be joining, at least for the transition process, with Harris himself staying on “for the foreseeable future.”

Jeff Harris, Mike Onghai

“We are extremely excited to be acquiring Talkwheel,” said Clickable CEO Mike Onghai in an emailed statement (he’s pictured with Harris above). “I have known Jeff and [Vice President of Product Joe Geraghty] for a couple of years now and have always thought Talkwheel had the most innovative fan engagement solution in market. Combining Talkwheel’s consumer facing offering with Clickable’s leading social media monitoring and reputation platform, we now have one of the most well rounded solutions in the social marketing space.”

Talkwheel had raised $1.5 million in funding from various angel investors.