Salesforce.com plans to buy social media monitoring vendor Radian6, whose technology tracks conversations occurring on social sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, the company said Wednesday.
Radian6's technology gives companies insights into what people are saying about their brands and products, as well as competitors. Its customers include Kodak, PepsiCo and greater than 50 percent of the Fortune 500, Salesforce.com said.
Salesforce.com will pay roughly $US276 million in cash and $50 million in stock, net of cash acquired. The transaction is expected to close by July 31.
Salesforce.com plans to meld Radian6's capabilities with its own growing array of software for sales and customer service, as well as its Chatter social networking platform. Developers will also be able to use Radian6 technology when building applications on Salesforce.com's Force.com platform, the company said.
The deal will "extend the value of all of our offerings," Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement.
Rumors had swirled for months that Salesforce.com was planning to buy Radian6, which will be the latest in a string of Salesforce.com purchases that include online meeting and collaboration vendor DimDim and Heroku, maker of a cloud-based platform for building Ruby applications.
(More to follow).
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris's e-mail address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com