

Salesforce Buys Social Media Monitoring Company Radian6 For $326 Million - joetek
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/30/salesforce-buys-social-media-monitoring-company-radian6-for-326-million/

======
sucuri2
Good for them! What most people doesn't know is that Radian6 founder, C.
Newton, also founded Q1 Labs ( a successful security company ) and was kicked
out of it a few years ago by the "board"...

Instead of giving up, he formed a new company and did very well for the second
time.

~~~
Zakuzaa
Steve Jobs all over again? :)

------
nikcub
some gems from the TC comment thread:

 _"SCRM comes of age in a big way by connecting inbound social media activity
to customer acquisition and retention strategies... Congrats!"_

 _"sf.com validates and values that businesses need to deploy a "listening
platform" to monitor all forms of customer conversation."_

marketing people are so cute

~~~
numlocked
The first comment is fairly legitimate, if phrased vapidly. Social CRM is a
real topic of discussion for anyone playing in the CRM space. If you look at
classic customer acquisition and retention strategies, they are based on the
data we were able to capture 5-10 years ago. It takes a while for "new" data
(social media activity, in-depth demographic and financial information) to
work its way into the practices of CRM users. There is a lot of opportunity to
improve acquisition strategies by targeting the friends and influencers of
customers (ie. Social CRM), but most of the major players have had trouble
delivering on that promise in their products. The acquisition is a big deal
and other CRM vendors will have to respond. The second quote you posted is
indeed meaningless.

------
zacharycohn
As someone who has used Radian6 before: Good luck, Salesforce... you'll need
it.

------
nikcub
Interesting earnout structure for the founders, considering the company raised
so little. I don't know how $14M over three years on top of $326M creates much
incentive to hang around.

------
jmacd
I wrote some thoughts,. one of the important things from a CDN perspective is
that Radian6 was not just built in Canada but funded here as well.

[http://startupnorth.ca/2011/03/30/salesforce-acquires-
radian...](http://startupnorth.ca/2011/03/30/salesforce-acquires-
radian6-for-326-million/)

~~~
lovskogen
CDN or canadian?

~~~
davidu
Not content delivery, but CDN as in Canadian.

People use CDN to refer in shorthand to Canada, even though it's not part of
any official shortening or abbreviation. The Canadian currency is officially
abbreviated as CAD although many folks incorrectly think it's CDN. :-)

------
adammcnamara
I'm excited to see if any of this money makes it back into the Maritime
startup community.

This is an area where Ottawa does extremely poorly. Very little mentorship and
money made it from the telecom generation of founders to today's generation.

------
kosmonaut
I've often found Salesforce software janky and frankenstein-ish. Radian6 is a
great acquisition but hopefully they won't try and marry it into some of their
other software.

~~~
lovskogen
Don't you think they'll merge in alot of the functions for social monitoring?
Seems inevitable.

------
horatiumocian
I wonder if there will be any more acquisitions in the social media
monitoring. I think the best candidate is Visible Technologies.

------
cal5k
It's a good day for New Brunswick!

~~~
gyardley
It's a great day for New Brunswick! May it inspire a new generation of
Maritime startups.

~~~
sucuri2
You guys from NB?

~~~
hubb
i live in fredericton. i was amused and delighted to see my hometown mentioned
in a tech crunch article. a disconnect i never thought i'd see.

congrats to the radian6 guys, and here's to hoping q1 labs is the next big
canadian tech success!

