

Google buys Wildfire - jervisfm
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/sparking-better-conversation-with.html.html

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aculver
Here's the corresponding article from the Wildfire blog:
[http://blog.wildfireapp.com/2012/07/31/wildfire-is-
joining-g...](http://blog.wildfireapp.com/2012/07/31/wildfire-is-joining-
google/) .

The timing on this is so funny to me, since a good friend of mine just moved
out to San Francisco last week to join Wildfire. "Surprise! You actually
joined Google!" :-) Congratulations to everyone!

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therealarmen
And the shakeout of social media management startups continues. Here's a recap
so far:

Vitrue (Oracle, $300 million)

Involver (Oracle, undisclosed)

Efficient Frontier (Adobe, $400 million)

Buddy Media (Salesforce, $689 million)

Wildfire (Google, $250 million)

Next up, HootSuite?

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jonaphin
You forgot Context Optional (acquired by Adobe earlier this year)

~~~
therealarmen
The deal was a little more complicated. I believe Efficient Frontier bought
Context Optional for $50 million, and then Adobe acquired eFrontier for $400
million. I went ahead and added it.

~~~
jonaphin
You are correct.

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/30/adobe-acquires-efficient-
fr...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/30/adobe-acquires-efficient-frontier-to-
boost-its-digital-marketing-solutions/)

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stevenbrianhall
I've been freelancing full-time with Wildfire since they were around 40 people
and had just closed their Series A. They've got a fantastic product (I still
like it after working with it day in and day out), and a seriously rocking
team. They deserve all the good stuff that this will bring.

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tocomment
Is there a tldr of what they actually do? I couldn't make heads or tails of it
from their website.

~~~
foobunny
Social media marketing for medium-sized to enterprise businesses. Ex. Software
subscription that a company like Pepsi would use to manage the social
properties/promotions for all their beverages.

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philipDS
A blog post about an acquisition and no link to the website of the actual
product (<http://www.wildfireapp.com/>)?

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jklein24
Fun fact: Mark Zuckerberg's sister, Arielle Zuckerberg, works for Wildfire and
so now she works for Google. Talk about sibling rivalry.

~~~
untog
From her Facebook:

 _I'm in Israel on Birthright and I just found out that I'm now a Google
employee. Not gonna lie... This feels pretty awkward, but I also feel very
proud to be a part of the Wildfire team on this exciting day for Alain and
Victoria._

She has 10,500 subscribers. I'm sort of fascinated by that- I wonder how much
she is worth to Wildfire just by virtue of who she is?

~~~
Evbn
A huge amount. Same reason his sister spun off a career as a Facebook
consultant.

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lazugod
Why does the blogpost look like this? <http://i.imgur.com/1KHCt.png>

~~~
RandallBrown
because your window is tiny.

I had the same thing happen to me too.

~~~
sp332
Mine does not look like that, even when I make the window tiny. FF 16, Win7.

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rwhitman
Considering the bulk of their offering is marketing tools for facebook, I'm
really curious what this means exactly.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Unless this is a very expensive aqui-hire, it does complicate the current
narrative that Facebook marketing is without value.

~~~
ceejayoz
Not necessarily. They're not Facebook-only, and it's entirely possible Google
may have Wildfire focus more on upcoming Google+ API stuff in the future.

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te_chris
Go NZ! (we try to claim what we can from down here :D) Great work though, they
built a nice product (and employed lots of kiwis from what I know).

~~~
wmboy
I had no idea this was a New Zealand founded company until I saw this as news
on the NZ Herald website.

Great to see a Kiwi tech startup seeing this kind of success!

------
jboggan
I visited over there in April - it was a very cool workplace full of
interesting and motivated people. Though they weren't that happy when I was
playing around with their app and found a bug related to daylight savings on a
Friday afternoon, haha. I'm really happy for them.

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mattja
A little cheap - $250 MIL vs. about $700 MIL that salesforce paid for buddy
media...

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100k
Funny, I just got an email from one of their recruiters today.

~~~
stephenhuey
They hit me up last spring and I briefly considered moving out there to join
them. Surprise, surprise!

------
bthomas
Random: page has a display bug on the retina iPad in portrait mode, content
width is too big

~~~
Evbn
Blogspot is broken in a special way for each platform. It's sweet, really.

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mburshteyn
Did somebody already buy North Social?

~~~
cmottau
[http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/25/vocus-buys-facebook-apps-
ma...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/25/vocus-buys-facebook-apps-maker-north-
social-for-7m-in-cash-18m-earnout/)

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codyko
Didn't see that one coming

~~~
nicholasreed
When you comment, would you please add something constructive to the
discussion that others may find useful? Your quick statement doesn't give any
reasoning as to why it caught you off guard, what you expected instead, how
you believe this may affect future acquisitions, etc. If you have that
knowledge, please share (or hold these little surprises to yourself). Thank
you!

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pomber
Everytime I go to Google Blog I start playing with the header balls and forget
to read the article

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fear91
What I find frightening is that this company was acquired for $250 mil and
I've never remember hearing about it. I really don't see those valuations to
be justified.

~~~
stephenhuey
They were making tons of money and a majority of their funding was untouched.
Solid.

