Google Acquires Wildfire

Two founders, a 4yr old service, platform for brands like Virgin and Spotify to manage and build up on their social efforts across the social websites, manage their pages, apps, tweets, advertisements and promotions etc..... leading to a startup that was valued somewhere between $250Mn to $350Mn. The deal closed a couple of days back with Google announcing the acquisition of Wildfire!

"Four years ago, we set out on a journey to make social media marketing easier and more effective. We thought our idea had potential, but little did we know what an incredible ride it would be. Not only have we helped to define and build an entirely new industry, but we’ve created a company that’s larger (from 5 to almost 400 employees in two and a half years!) and more successful (we’re proud to serve 16,000 customers including 30 of the top 50 brands) than we ever imagined." This is what the guys at the Wildfire had to say to start with on the Wildfire official blog.

The acquisition is going to boost the social marketing efforts on Google' side. Especially helping their social network Google plus take the most benefit out of it. Wildfire has been a marketing tool for companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube, Pinterest and while their main concentration and line of work would now be with Google, they will continue to be what they were for their customers before as is evident when they said that "there will be no changes to our service and support for our customers." 

What exactly the role of the company would be within Google, but it seems they will continue with the same pattern and in line to what they were before being acquired by the search giant. Google plus would be a  first in the priority line for sure but Google but considering that Wildfire was serving their biggest competitor, Facebook, as well we and everybody would be quite interested to see how do they go about the business; considering that Wildfire is tipped to be the biggest marketing partner for the social media giant. There is still some time as the acquisition is still quite fresh, so we will let things settle down there!

Google has been in pursuit for a social media marketing tool for quite some time now. It was already kind of getting lat when we saw the Buddy Media deal taken up by Salesforce and then Virtue and Involver going with Oracle. With social giant taking up Wildfire, its going to be a nice duel in the marketing competition.

[Note: Image source,Wildfire blog]