Wikio Acquires Neotia - The E-Reputation Experts

PARIS, April 20, 2010 /PRNewswire/ --

- Wikio, the European communication Group Specialising in the Blogosphere and Social Media, has Acquired Neotia, a Buzz Monitoring and Online Reputation Management Platform.

- The Move Allows the Wikio Group to Reinforce its Position as the European Leader in Social Media and Digital Marketing.

    After E-Buzzing (
http://blog.wikio.fr/2009/12/ebuzzing-et-wikio-au-service-des-blogueurs.html)
in December and Promodigital (
http://blog.wikio.fr/2010/03/lentreprise-promodigital-se-joint-%C3%A0-laventu
re-wikio-.html) in March, the Wikio Group continues its development by
joining forces with Neotia (http://www.neotia.com/), a French firm
specialising in buzz monitoring. By linking up with Wikio, an information
portal boasting blog and social media expertise, Neotia will create one of
the most competitive platforms on the Internet for measuring online influence
levels and reputation.

(Due to the length of the URLs above, it may be necessary to copy and paste the hyperlinks into your Internet browser's URL address field. Remove the space if one exists.)

"Created in 2005 with communications agencies and marketing professionals in mind, Neotia analyses brand influence and the impact of buzz campaigns," says Jean-Pierre Colomb, Managing Director and founder of Neotia. "Thanks to Wikio, we will now have access to an index of over one million web sites that have been categorised and organised, as well as state-of-the-art technology in the domain of semantic analysis and the measurement of authority in blogging and social networking," he added.

Wikio, with over one million websites indexed, is the number one European service allowing users to follow the news on blogs and media sites. Over 20 million visitors make use of the portal each month, and Wikio's Top Blog rankings have become a primary indicator of influence for bloggers and advertising agencies.

"Neotia provides us with an essential component of our strategy, as we aim to make Wikio the European leader in Social Media Marketing," said Pierre Chappaz, CEO of the Wikio Group. "This union will be beneficial to our commercial teams - Ebuzzing and PromoDigital - who will be able to offer a global solution to advertisers and agencies," he added.

By bringing together Ebuzzing, Neotia, PromoDigital and Wikio, the group is now in a position to analyse brand influence, survey company reputation and engage in conversation with social media: blogs, forums, social networks, Twitter and more. This combined solution for online reputation management arising from the Neotia-Wikio fusion will be carried out under the Wikio brand.

Pierre Chappaz, Wikio Group CEO, founded Kelkoo, the leading European shopping search engine, which was sold to Yahoo! in 2004 for EUR475 million. He then became President of Yahoo! Europe, until he left to set up Wikio.

Jean-Pierre Colomb, Managing Director of Neotia, a competitive intelligence professional and renowned expert in decision analysis. He was previously head of an English product innovation team, then a company department specialising in trend detection and analysis.

Neotia and Wikio were advised by Mirabaud Financial Planning S.A. for this operation (Etienne Mouthon).

About the Wikio Group: focusing on the blogosphere and social networks, Wikio is a communications group operating in Europe and the USA. Wikio boasts sites in six countries, indexing over one million blogs and media websites; it is also the premier European news portal with over 20 million unique visitors each month. Ebuzzing (Promodigital in Italy), the advertising arm of the group, is a platform allowing advertisers to take part in the conversations taking place at the heart of the blogosphere and social networks via the diffusion of quality content and videos. Ebuzzing currently counts over 600 advertisers as clients.

About Neotia: active in the domain of buzz monitoring and decision analysis for marketing agencies, consultancies and big industry groups, Neotia pioneered the use of information systems for managing online reputation. Neotia also offers buzz monitoring solutions, providing advertisers with in-depth studies of their desired sector, as well as reports on advertising and buzz campaigns, carried out in partnership with communications agencies.

SOURCE Wikio Group