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So, when I read about the Radian6 acquisition by Salesforce.com I felt a sense of relief and vindication. Firstly, congratulations to both parties.  Salesforce did their homework and concluded that social media intelligence will be a key component of customer relationship management going forward.  Further, if early reports on Radian6’s revenue are correct, Salesforce apparently placed a great premium on those capabilities.

The acquisition is exciting, but not a great surprise for those working in this space.. it is the start for a number more to come (if the grapevine is anything to go by). We also saw Brandtology picked up by Media Monitors a month ago so clearly some are waking up and drawing the same conclusions I have about the importance of social media monitoring has in brand and competitor tracking, PR, market research, marketing measurement, lead generation, customer support and much more is already under way.  More and more companies are recognizing this as a best practice. The market is growing quickly year over year and at a quickening pace.  In other words, social media monitoring, and all that it implies, is already going mainstream and these acquisitions are a proxy for this trend.

This acquisition is also exciting because this new attention will focus technology firms that are developing social media monitoring/social analytics/social intelligence solutions and only push the bar higher as we all try to get that leading edge or differentiated feature. Just doing good sentiment analysis using natural language processing is not a USP now.. we are heading mainstream with a core set of features carried by all vendors and that verticalisation that we saw in CRM's will come our way (or so I think).

Further, going mainstream carries the responsibility of delivering real value, consistently and giving all the product support expected by eager customers wanting to 'try' these new platforms.

To close, the size of this deal, the (great) multiple, and the name of the acquirer (Salesforce) should have a very positive impact on social media monitoring and the broader social media business stack. Expect to see a flurry of M&A within this group of social media analytics players - from big established Vendors gobbling up nimble, innovative social analytics tech firms... good luck to all that play in this area.