Social Media

Google Acquires Social Media Management Platform Wildfire


Google has acquired social media management platform Wildfire Interactive for an undisclosed amount, the tech giant announced Tuesday.

Wildfire, which launched four years ago by Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard (pictured) was funded in part by Facebook, counts Amazon, Verizon Wireless, Virgin, Gilt Groupe and Spotify among its clients. It helps them manage their content, ads, promotions and more across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest.

Wildfire is the latest in a string of acquisitions of B2B social media firms. In May, Oracle paid $300 million for Vitrue, a cloud-based firm that handles social media communications for McDonald's, American Express and Gillette, among others. Oracle followed that acquisition by snapping up social media monitoring firm Collective Intellect in early June. That same month, paid $745 million for Buddy Media, and Syncapse bought a smaller social media firm, Clickable. It was long rumored that Facebook was interested in buying Wildfire.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but AllThingsD's Peter Kafka's sources tell him its around $250 million — a third of the price Salesforce paid for Buddy Media, which Google was reportedly once interested in purchasing.

In a blog post, Google's Jason Miller said that Wildfire would be integrated into its suite of website and ad management tools, including Google Analytics, Admeld and DoubleClick. It's Google's way of ensuring that advertisers continue to come to Google to purchase and manage their display advertising campaigns, whether they're looking to do it on Google or on another social network.

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