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And the shakeout of social media management startups continues. Here's a recap so far: Vitrue (Oracle, $300 million) Involver (Oracle, undisclosed) Efficient

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?

jonaphin 14y ago
You forgot Context Optional (acquired by Adobe earlier this year)
- fogonthedowns 14y ago
  50 million.
- therealarmen 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    You are correct. http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/30/adobe-acquires-efficient-frontier-to-boost-its-digital-marketing-solutions/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/30/adobe-acquires-efficient-fr...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- dmix 14y ago
  These companies have real business models and charged serious money to provide value to big corporate companies. How is that a bubble? Who is getting fooled out of their money?
Michikono 14y ago
The exits of Buddy Media and Wildfire are related to Facebook introducing Timeline to Pages. If you assume they were notified of the change in early 2012, and the change happened in March/April, and a deal of this size taking a few months to close, you can see how this deal (and the Buddy Media one) are likely directly related. The change also coincides with WF and BM both announcing ad-related pivots the day before Facebook announced their Timeline change (source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wildfire-announces-new-capabilities-to-optimize-new-facebook-mobile-experience-2012-02-29 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wildfire-announces-new-capa... and http://www.marketwatch.com/story/buddy-media-announces-brighter-option-acquisition-adds-paid-advertising-solution-to-social-enterprise-software-suite-2012-02-27 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/buddy-media-announces-brigh...). The Pages change destroyed many companies. The week that the change was forced, I took a screen shot of the top app losers on socialbakers. Check it out yourself: http://i.imgur.com/C3zSQ.png http://i.imgur.com/C3zSQ.png . BandPage, for example, lost 90% of its traffic in 60 days. Wildfire apps saw their user base gutted as well. I remember looking up the stats for a few of their apps a month later and saw their app install base had fallen huge double digit percentages. It's hard to see exactly how companies like WF were impacted, but I think the Timeline change gutted their unstoppable growth and forced them to exit while things were still looking bright. And this, in my opinion, helps explain why they took a relatively small exit of $250M (given the larger $689M of BM). That's my guess at the situation. ( Edit: The reason I have this info handy is because I looked into this in depth a few months back: http://www.michikono.com/2012/03/22/facebook-is-okay-with-hurting-their-developers/ http://www.michikono.com/2012/03/22/facebook-is-okay-with-hu... )
- callmeed 14y ago
  I think your Timeline analysis is spot-on but I don't think it is the cause for the difference in acquisition prices. BM seems more focused on big brand/Fortune 500 customers with a big focus on analytics. From what I read they were making a lot of money too. Wildfire seemed like more of a SMB tool.
leeskye 14y ago
In the near future, I see YC companies PageLever & Crowdbooster on that list.

jonaphin 14y ago

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

fogonthedowns 14y ago
50 million.
therealarmen 14y ago
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 14y ago
  You are correct. http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/30/adobe-acquires-efficient-frontier-to-boost-its-digital-marketing-solutions/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/30/adobe-acquires-efficient-fr...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

dmix 14y ago
These companies have real business models and charged serious money to provide value to big corporate companies. How is that a bubble? Who is getting fooled out of their money?

Michikono 14y ago

The exits of Buddy Media and Wildfire are related to Facebook introducing Timeline to Pages. If you assume they were notified of the change in early 2012, and the change happened in March/April, and a deal of this size taking a few months to close, you can see how this deal (and the Buddy Media one) are likely directly related. The change also coincides with WF and BM both announcing ad-related pivots the day before Facebook announced their Timeline change (source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wildfire-announces-new-capabilities-to-optimize-new-facebook-mobile-experience-2012-02-29 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wildfire-announces-new-capa... and http://www.marketwatch.com/story/buddy-media-announces-brighter-option-acquisition-adds-paid-advertising-solution-to-social-enterprise-software-suite-2012-02-27 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/buddy-media-announces-brigh...). The Pages change destroyed many companies. The week that the change was forced, I took a screen shot of the top app losers on socialbakers. Check it out yourself: http://i.imgur.com/C3zSQ.png http://i.imgur.com/C3zSQ.png . BandPage, for example, lost 90% of its traffic in 60 days. Wildfire apps saw their user base gutted as well. I remember looking up the stats for a few of their apps a month later and saw their app install base had fallen huge double digit percentages. It's hard to see exactly how companies like WF were impacted, but I think the Timeline change gutted their unstoppable growth and forced them to exit while things were still looking bright. And this, in my opinion, helps explain why they took a relatively small exit of $250M (given the larger $689M of BM). That's my guess at the situation. ( Edit: The reason I have this info handy is because I looked into this in depth a few months back: http://www.michikono.com/2012/03/22/facebook-is-okay-with-hurting-their-developers/ http://www.michikono.com/2012/03/22/facebook-is-okay-with-hu... )

callmeed 14y ago
I think your Timeline analysis is spot-on but I don't think it is the cause for the difference in acquisition prices. BM seems more focused on big brand/Fortune 500 customers with a big focus on analytics. From what I read they were making a lot of money too. Wildfire seemed like more of a SMB tool.

leeskye 14y ago

In the near future, I see YC companies PageLever & Crowdbooster on that list.