Salesforce Prepares to Purchase Buddy Media

Salesforce, the leading cloud computing and CRM enterprise platform, is preparing to acquire social media ad broker Buddy Media for upwards of $800 million, All Things Digital reported.

The move parallels current efforts being undertaken by Salesforce to expand its social presence.

New York-based Buddy Media is, in today’s increasingly more social business world, the best ‘friend’ a company could ask for: they’re best known for providing app support, maintaining ads and pages on Facebook, and getting their clients’ content on many other social outlets (Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn.)

SEE RELATED STORIES FROM THE WDM CONTENT NETWORK:

• Measure Marketing Success with 6 billion Facebook Users
• Social Media Dominates Traditional Marketing

Click here to read the latest issue of Business Review Australia

This service fits in nicely with Salesforce’s newest programs launched within the past year including Chatter, a business-social network; Data.com for sales and marketing execs; and touch.salesforce.com, an app for on-the-go execs. They also acquired social media monitoring company Radian6 back in March.

Salesforce is certainly not the first company to pursue social media marketing firms: in fact, it’s been said that Google also bid on Buddy Media. Last week, Oracleacquired Vitrue, an Atlanta-based company that manages more than 1.3 billion social interactions across 500-plus brands.

At this year’s Dreamforce conference and trade show, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made it very clear in his keynote speech that “CEOs who aren't listening to customers or employees online risk losing their jobs.”

Therefore, prepare to hear about a lot more companies looking into social media platform acquisitions over the coming months.