Salesforce.com buys out Radian6

Salesforce has continued its journey on the acquisition train by snapping up Canadian firm Radian6 for US$276 million in cash and US$50 million in stock.

Marc Benioff, chief executive (CEO) of Salesforce, has sung the praises of the social media monitoring firm before and included its technology in his company’s Service Cloud 3 product – launched earlier this month.

Now it seems he wants more and has agreed the deal to acquire Radian6, which is expected to close before the end of July 2011.

“With Radian6, Salesforce.com is gaining the technology and market leader in social media monitoring,” said Benioff. “We see this as a huge opportunity. Not only will this acquisition accelerate our growth, it will extend the value of all of our offerings.”

The technology from Radian6 tracks conversations across major social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, along with blogs and online communities, and gives companies real-time insights to the buzz around the internet.

As well as offering a monitoring platform so firms can see how their social media attempts are being received, it also offers a tool to help customers engage with blogs and online communities.

“Social media has made every business recognise the value of paying attention to the voice of the customer,” said Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6.

“Radian6’s technology is built for the new norm of customer engagement - real time, two way conversations that includes social channels. Joining the Salesforce.com team will allow Radian6 to grow faster to meet the demands of our rapidly expanding customer base.”

On top of the money outlined above, founders of Radian6 will receive US$4 million in cash and US$10 million in stocks. Its board of directors has already approved the acquisition.

This article originally appeared at itpro.co.uk