Hootsuite acquires talent and tech from Brightkit

Hootsuite, which has now passed 10M users, launches new product called Campaigns

Social media management company Hootsuite has purchased social marketing platform Brightkit it was revealed on Thursday.

Brightkit helps brands and agencies launch web-based social marketing campaigns. While no financial terms of the deal were disclosed, Hootsuite has already announced what it will be doing with its new acquisition: integrating the company's technology into a new product called Hootsuite Campaigns, which it says is "designed to help organizations extend the reach of social media programs."

With the new product, marketers will be able to create social media galleries in order to aggregate mentions and rich media containing specific hashtags, as well as monitor incoming content before it appears publicly.

They can also initiate contests, or create a monitoring stream to follow adoption and target messages by region or demographic to focus engagement. Campaigns will allows them to manage and moderate these social campaigns directly from the Hootsuite dashboard and to export social campaign data for real-time analysis and action.

"While Hootsuite's native engagement and publishing capabilities already give marketers the ability to promote and extend content to networks of followers, Hootsuite Campaigns really broadens the scope to now include friends of friends. Hootsuite is also exploring how entirely new audiences can be reached through paid social products," Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes told VatorNews.

"All told, Hootsuite Campaigns gives marketers a consolidated solution for executing more dimensions of their social strategies. Brightkit’s technical infrastructure, product philosophy and culture make them a great fit for Hootsuite and helps fill the customer demand for high impact social campaign solutions."

So what happens to Brightkit now that is being integrated into Hootsuite as part of Hootsuite Campaigns? It will slowly be shut down, as this is an aqui-hire for Hootsuite. 

"The Brightkit brand won’t be kept, but the team has officially joined the Hootsuite family.  While we sunset the Brightkit brand we’re aiming to provide a seamless experience for our joint customers over the next few months," Holmes said. 

"We’re excited to deepen our partnership and join a company whose platform has been deployed across 10+ million users and 744 of the Fortune 1000.  In this acquisition, we are combining our technology and team with Hootsuite’s leading analytics and engagement platform," Brightkit CEO Richard Hungerford wrote in a blogpost. "As our companies come together, Brightkit customers will see exciting opportunities for expanded service and functionality."

Brightkit and Hootsuite have been working together since early 2013, when Brightkit’s social campaign solution was integrated as a part of Hootsuite’s ecosystem.

Founded in 2008, the Vancouver-based Hootsuite is a social media management system for businesses, allowing them to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from a single, web-based dashboard.

Businesses can launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audience, and distribute targeted messages. Its customers include PepsiCo, Virgin, Orange, Sony Music, Telus, HBO, WWF, UPS, Panasonic, and 237 of the Fortune 500 companies.

Hootsuite has now made eight acquisitions in the last two years, include Swift App in 2010, as well as TwitterBar, TwapperKeeper, What the Trend, and Geotoko in 2011. The company picked up social media management system Seesmic for an undisclosed amount this past September, and, most recently bought social analytics tools uberVU in January. 

In addition to the news, Hootsuite has also revealed some new growth stats as well. It now has over 10 million users in more than 175 countries around the world. The company has raised just under $187 million in funding, most recently raising $165 million in August of last year.

(Image source: brightkit.com)