Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is happily announcing that it has acquired Wildfire, the social media management platform. No details have been disclosed regarding the total valuation of the transaction, although AllThingsD speculates that the deal is priced at $250 million.
Jason Miller, Product Management Director, shared the news on Google’s Official Blog:
“Today we’re happy to share that the Wildfire team will be joining Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG). Their co-founders, Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard, launched their startup just four years ago…..With Wildfire, we’re looking forward to creating new opportunities for our clients to engage with people across all social services. We believe that better content and more seamless solutions will help unlock the full potential of the web for people and businesses.”
This acquisition follows a couple of other deals that also bought similar platforms; Earlier this year Oracle got its hands on Virtue in $300 million deal and later Buddy Media was bought by salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE:CRM) and finally Syncapse bought Clickable.
Rumors over the web claimed that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) was up for buying Wildfire. It is also worth mentioning that back in 2009, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) funded the launch of Wildfire, among 21 other startups through the Facebook fbFund, a fund and mentorship program for enterprises that were built around Facebook.
The big clients of Wildfire are Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ), Virgin, Gilt Groupe, Cirque du Soleil, and Spotify. Being a management platform, Wildfire manages their content, promotions, offers and customers/fans, apps, tweets, videos, sponsorships, ads on numerous social media platforms like Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Twitter, Linkedin Corporation (NYSE:LNKD), Google+, YouTube etc. The acquisition will help Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) in expanding its ever growing ad business and will also allow Google greater integration in competing platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
