Vancouver-based social media dashboard firm HootSuite Media Inc. has acquired Cambridge, Mass.-based social analytics firm uberVU, the firm announced this morning.
HootSuite’s dashboard offers digital marketing managers easy access to various social media accounts across different channels including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. The software tracks user relationships with their contacts and makes it easy to monitor and engage with an audience on social media, and allows scheduling of posts. It does include an analytics feature that charges users for various reports based on a credit system, so marketers can see how their accounts are growing and what followers they are interacting with.
In a blog post about the acquisition, HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes says uberVU’s solution will improve HootSuite’s ability to offer its users insights.
“We’ve seen that single-purpose social media monitoring tools frustrate users by making it difficult to put data to use and turn insight into action. By bringing uberVU on board, HootSuite is adding powerful analytics capabilities to our battle-tested engagement platform. This is a direct response to feedback from HootSuite customers and has accelerated our existing analytics plan,” he writes.
uberVU’s dashboard also enabled users to monitor multiple social channels at once and post to them, similar to Hootsuite. It then delivers reports automatically at a frequency determined by the user. The user also determines what type of report they want and how they want it to look using a drag and drop report builder.
The uberVU software remains a separate service for the time being and will continue to operate as standalone software until the software can be integrated with HootSuite.
With the uberVU acquisition, HootSuite gains access to more than 200 customers that include 3M, NBC, Heinz, Fujitsu, SC Johnson, Getty Images, Indiegogo, and more. HootSuite says it already counts 75 per cent of the Fortune 1000 companies among its users.
