Acquisition rumors have been going around since last Spring Radian6 was going to be acquired and now Radian6 has been acquired by Salesforce.com in a largely cash deal with $326 Million dollars – $276 million cash and $50 million stock,  as of today, March 30th, 2011.

The acquisition will enhance all Salesforce.com products including Salesforce.com products including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Chatter and Force.com.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 30, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing (http://www.salesforce.com/cloudcomputing/) company, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Radian6, the industry-leading social media monitoring platform, for approximately $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock, net of cash acquired. The transaction is expected to be completed in salesforce.com’s fiscal second quarter ending July 31, 2011, subject to customary closing conditions.

Let’s talk about this.   Suitors for Radian6 have been suggested over the last year including Google, Cision, Adobe, New York Times (or any large publishing outlet);  while it makes perfect sense that Salesforce would acquire Radian6, I don’t think it was on anyone’s top of mind, since Radian6 does many partnership deals you could have just as easily supposed Adobe (for Omniture) or WebTrends could have wanted to integrate Radian6 than Salesforce.com.

… But the cards didn’t get dealt that way – and Salesforce already has an integration with Radian6 for over two years, as did WebTrends and more recently Adobe Omniture and Google Analytics …..  so there were many possibilities – but also t that data is a commodity and it’s what you do with the data that is important (you can buy much of the data Radian6 provides from Aggregators and or/ Alterian / BrandWatch / at el).

What this acquisition of Radian6 by Salesforce.com really means is the next phase of Social Media Analytics has now taken place … that the Social Data is now going Quant … it’s going into massive databases where it can be cut and diced and segmented…. into data cubes, much as I postulated last fall in my Compete.com white paper on Spectrum Analytics – Tracking Social Media ROI using Spectrum Analytics.

I think the acquisition of Radian6 by Salesforce.com   signals  Paul Holmes was right on when he said after our debate in Davos last month that… (well .. read Holmes post)

My book about Social Media Analytics is all about that …. but instead of two or three years from now … I’d put the integration into next year; the needs of customers are becoming much more diagnostic and Return on Investment focused – and while the platforms have been improving – the skill to use those capabilities well, hasn’t.

Most companies still don’t understand what to do with Radian6 or the other  platforms / tools they use for listening as there are  vast repositories of data via Web services / APIs with many big pipes that are growing day by day.

Just because there’s available data (aka. Radian6/Salesforce.com) – doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve got the right Org Chart and Corporate Culture to leverage it; most companies don’t – that’s the real issue and why Holmes thinks companies ( Paul Holmes focuses on PR) require  Chief Analytics Officers – because you not can treat platform decisions to be made well, otherwise.

And as Marshall McLuhan said 47 years ago – The Medium is The Message.  The Wrong applications of the medium alter the message to the point it can not be communicated properly … and that’s what’s happening in so many places that I can’t count them all – people are still trying to grapple with Twitter and Facebook 101  - where they really need to go is QUANT … where Radian6 is going with Salesforce.com … but that takes another type of individual to worth with data … someone who is more a blend of computer science with the arts …  creative with the data, but honest with it as well.   These changes will also impact timelines and deliverables – where precision will be needed

Among other things the acquisition of Radian6 by Salesforce will

• Shake up the Social Listening industry … just last month Brandtology was acquired, and over the last 24 months Scout Labs, Biz360, Techrigy, et all.   There will be few independents left – clearly the time to sell is now ….  it will be difficult to compete with the research and marketing dollars that bigger companies can offer unless the platform has some niche needs it fulfills - and if it is that good, it will eventually be acquired anyway.
• Speed up the development of this field by bringing CRM to the forefront.
• Establish a higher price point for services around social listening.

dd

Again, been busy preparing for the latest set of conference appearances, posted last week, that I have not had the time to post as much as I’d like.  However, that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about what I would post about, had I the time, and what I’d like to comment about; the easiest way for me to do that is via my journal posts.

Michael Hyatt wrote a post I found interesting and comforting about book writing (esp, since I just wrote a book); he also provides guidance in how to write and review a blog post that are very helpful, especially reading the post aloud.  I’m also trying to figure out what to make of Steve Gillmore’s post at AOL TechCrunch about Strangers in Paradise last week – looks like it has to do with how information is now moving back and forth between devices, bits of information, confusing where it all starts.

Google also improved their keyword tool to look at mobile devices;  I’ve been meaning to take look at it and will, shortly. There was also a lot of buzz around the new Color iPhone App, but I have yet to see anything interesting from it – maybe once more people use it there will be more to say about it.  I’m also going to take a look at DropVox (only useful if you have an iPhone, I suppose)

Sendroid also looks interesting as a file sharing service but I haven’t tried it yet (no time) and Lee Odden wrote a post I liked about merging search and social (which I’ve also written about).  Finally, Kevin Hillstrom wrote a post (that should be a book) about the top 10 analytics challenges for analysts - I can relate to all of the issues that Kevin brings up – it’s all happened to me – and it shows the issues that surround handling data that few people understand who aren’t engaged in this kind of work and haven’t had the same issues to contend with.

Over the next two weeks or so I’ll be speaking at the following events (not in chronological order):

The first ever Radian6 User Conference  in Boston on April 7th and 8th – I’m on a panel on Social Media ROI.  The Conference is called Social 2011.

Shortly before, on April 6th I’ll be speaking online at MediaBistro’s Social Media Marketing Bootcamp on Tracking Engagement with Analytics, along with K.D. Paine.  Again, this is an online event called Social Media Marketing Bootcamp.

On April 1st I’m speaking first at McGraw Hill’s offices in NYC (my publisher for Social Media Analytics) to the Social Media Task force on tracking social media – I’m looking forward to it.

Later that afternoon I’ll be at Socialize 2011 taking place at the New Yorker Hotel on Measuring Social Media Success.

Look forward to meeting some of my readers at one or more of these events, most of which you can still sign up for.