Salesforce acquires social marketing champion Buddy Media

Perhaps, some years ago SAP and Oracle thought on the opportunity to acquire Salesforce, but for some reason decided that it was bad idea. And now Salesforce itself can make big purchases, even bigger than these dinosaurs. Today, Salesforce announced the acquisition (for $689 million) of Buddy Media - the largest social marketing service. Last month Oracle bought a similar (but not so popular) service Vitrue (for $300 million). From the one hand with Buddy Media Salesforce is buying the client base, as Buddy Media has more than 1,000 large customers, including Virgin Mobile, HP, Matte and L'Oreal. In addition, the service is used by 8 of 10 world's largest advertising agencies. On the other hand Buddy Media - is a great addition to another social marketing tool - Radian6, that Salesforce bought last year. Radian6 is used for listening social networks while Buddy Media is a tool for publishing content to social networks and measuring the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns.

For example, Buddy Media allows to manage ads on Facebook, post viral messages and measure their reach, send news and announcements to social network from single dashboard.

By investing so much money in Buddy Media, Salesforce is showing how important is social marketing component for today's CRM systems.

See also: Top 10 Online CRM software