HootSuite, the developers of a popular social media management platform, announced late last week that it has acquired Seesmic, a competing social media platform. The acquisition was announced in a HootSuite blog post published Thursday.
Both companies offer cross-platform applications for managing social media activities across multiple networks, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others. While both companies have worked to establish themselves with business customers, including enterprise B2B marketers, HootSuite is generally viewed as the more successful of the two companies.
HootSuite currently reports more than 4.5 million enterprise customers, although the company has not disclosed how many of those are paying users.
According to press reports, HootSuite CEO Ryan Homes said HootSuite will acquire Seesmic mostly to gain access to its enterprise customer base – not for the company’s technology. Current Seesmic customers will be encouraged to migrate to HootSuite’s existing offering.
The merger also comes at a time when Twitter has become increasingly restrictive about third-party access to its data stream – a policy that could spell trouble for consumer-facing social media management tools. HootSuite, by comparison, has a cordial relationship with Twitter, and it focuses heavily on enterprise-facing “social CRM” solutions that are widely viewed as more compatible with Twitter’s own long-term business goals.
“I have always had a lot of respect for Seesmic’s CEO, Loïc Le Meur and the role Seesmic has played in advancing social business,” said Holmes in the HootSuite blog post announcing the deal. “We are thrilled to welcome Seesmic’s users into the HootSuite family.”
“We’ve always been big fans of Ryan Holmes and the HootSuite team, since the days we were all pioneering the Social Media landscape,” said Le Meur. “We’re thrilled today to announce that Seesmic is joining HootSuite, and we’re excited for our users: They are becoming part of the HootSuite family, and they will be able to continue to build their brand and social business.”
