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SalesForce.com Gets SocialCRM In A Big Way - Buys Radian6 for $326 Million

Salesforceradian6The news rocking the Twittersphere and PR/marketing side of the online world today is that SalesForce.com is acquiring social media monitoring company Radian6 for $326 million USD ($276 million cash and $50 million stock). SFDC issued the standard overly formal news release which has the gory details for those whose eyes are still open. Radian6, on the other hand, has a nice friendly blog post up

The coverage is predictably everywhere... and climbing up Techmeme right now. Some stories:

For my part, I'm intrigued to see how they will further integrate Radian6's extensive social media monitoring into SalesForce.com's already powerful CRM environment. Some hints are in the news release:

  • Sales and Service Cloud: Social media monitoring and engagement has emerged as the requirement for any brand and customer engagement strategy, helping companies join conversations about their brands and stay connected to their customers and prospects. By combining Radian6’s social media monitoring and engagement platform with Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, companies will be able to keep customer success at the center of their business with real-time social intelligence.

  • Salesforce Chatter: Radian6 and salesforce.com will create the bridge between public social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and online communities, and Salesforce Chatter, the private, secure social network for the enterprise. Chatter feeds will no longer just contain the activity happening within the walls of a company, but will be filled with real time insights from fans on Facebook pages, followers on Twitter, comments on blog posts and more.

  • Force.com Platform: Developers will be able to build apps that tap into the power of Radian6, putting the social web into everything they build. In such a dynamic market, this acquisition will present a huge opportunity for salesforce.com to extend its developer and partner ecosystem with technology not available anywhere else.

Done well, it could truly provide a powerful means for building "Social CRM" applications. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next!


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