HootSuite acquires Seesmic. It’s probably the news of the day in social media land. There are several reasons to assume HootSuite is going for the corporate social media marketer.
HootSuite started out as one of the many social media management tools many years ago. However, the company has been continuously innovating and adding new features, making it increasingly more interesting than several other social media management tools with similar and even higher price points.
HootSuite recently integrated a bunch of new productivity social apps to its app directory, including SocialBro, GoPollGo, NeedTagger and Videolicious. And so today news hits HootSuite acquires Seesmic.
The new apps HootSuite added to its directory are quite interesting. SocialBro, for instance, ads several cool filters to the Twitter accounts in HootSuite. As said, the biggest news is the acquisition of Seesmic, though, the brain child of Le Web founder and French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur. Le Meur posted an emotional blog this summer where he wrote about the difficulties with Seesmic (in March Seesmic had to let go half its employees).
Loic Le Meur in that post: “Success doesn’t come where you expect it most of the times. It’s unrelated to how hard you try to focus your efforts and your time on something. I have spent 95% of my time the last five years on Seesmic and 5% on LeWeb. Seesmic hasn’t been what I have hoped for (even though I’m still trying hard) ….”
HootSuite is going for the corporate user
How much Hootsuite is paying for Seesmic is not revealed, but the company confirmed in an interview with TechCrunch that the reason HootSuite acquires Seesmic is the enterprise audience, not the technology. HootSuite will try to convert Seesmic users in HootSuite users and is clearly going after the corporate customer. What the next steps will be is still to be seen.
Anyway, HootSuite is already a good social media management client. It allows you to connect to several networks and provides a good set of analytics. The platform also enables integration with third-party analytics tools (Google Analytics, Facebook Insights).
Its app directory and developer community are strong assets. Other apps in the HootSuite app directory include YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr, MailChimp, Constant Contact, Yammer, HubSpot, Storify, Zendesk and SocialFlow.In other words: a bunch of social, email marketing, support and marketing automation apps in the cloud.
Maybe more advanced analytics and social CRM are what HootSuite is after next. HootSuite offers different versions: Free, Pro and Enterprise (enabling team collaboration and providing more advanced analytics). More about the acquisition on HootSuite’s blog.
