Jive Software Acquires Social Media Monitoring Innovator Filtrbox

PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ --

Company News

• Jive, the Social Business Software (SBS) leader, today announced the acquisition of privately-held Filtrbox, a social media monitoring (SMM) innovator. Jive will integrate the Filtrbox real-time social media monitoring and engagement capabilities into the Jive SBS platform to help enterprises harness the power of the social web and change the way they make decisions, develop products, go to market, and engage with customers, prospects and brand influencers.
• The Jive SBS Platform provides Social Business Software functionality that injects a corporate infrastructure with a social layer to connect people, content and activities inside and outside the enterprise. A key component to this vision is the ability to drive real value from the "real-time web," beyond simply "listening" to online social interaction.
• Initially, Jive will integrate Filtrbox technology into the Jive Market Engagement solution, the first solution to combine SMM with the power of collaborative SBS to implement a unified social media engagement strategy.
• Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Market Perspective

• As Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other powerful online sources have become a greater force of influence on consumer and business purchasing decisions, the global economy is moving to a "conversation economy."
• But today, most enterprises have only focused on the role the social web plays in brand disruptions. Even the most sophisticated use cases - where companies have used the social web to promote products and build the brand - fall short of truly engaging and driving the power of real-time conversations.
• Because of their complexity and cost, SMM tools have been confined to a handful of power-users within an organization. Given the increasingly strategic role social web conversations are playing in product development, customer service and support, a broader set of users want and need easy, cost-effective access to social intelligence.

Supporting Quotes

• "Our acquisition of Filtrbox is another example of Jive's leadership in defining and delivering Social Business Software solutions that deliver real business impact," said Dave Hersh, CEO of Jive Software. "SBS has quickly become a 'must have' for organization looking to address the biggest challenges of today's global marketplace: unpredictable competitive pressures, capricious market conditions, and unparalleled customer word-of-mouth driving purchasing decisions."
• "It is time for enterprises to start thinking differently about SMM, to move from being reactive to actively engaging with customers to provide them the experience they want," said Chris Morace, SVP of Products at Jive. "The real opportunity is integrating a socially-connected workforce to the customers it serves to make them feel valued, important, and heard. We see tremendous potential in the combination of SMM and SBS to change the way companies leverage conversations on the social web to deliver real business value."
• "We are very excited to join the Jive team and to infuse Jive SBS with the Filtrbox SMM technology," said Ari Newman, Founder and President of Filtrbox. "Simply listening to conversations on the social web is only a starting point for enterprises. The true value is identifying and engaging in those real-time conversations that will move the organization forward. Together, Jive and Filtrbox will elevate the value of monitoring and engagement for companies who use the social web to grow their business."

Filtrbox Technology

• After a thorough evaluation of SMM providers, Jive chose Filtrbox for several key reasons:
  • Filtrbox is designed for a broad set of users with an intuitive user experience that allows for rapid adoption, which is in strong alignment with Jive's philosophy.
  • Filtrbox includes powerful collaboration features that align with Jive SBS to socialize key observations and collaborate on appropriate responses.
  • Filtrbox makes it easy to prioritize feeds and dial the "noise" up or down to manage information from the social web. It uses intelligence to adjust rankings based on how the user interacts with the data, and offers the ability to analyze the trends and influencers in an enterprise's market.
  • Filtrbox has a scalable architecture that enables enterprises to process large volumes of social intelligence faster and at a lower cost. And its on-demand model matches Jive's strategy for expanding its cloud footprint in the future.

Jive's Vision

• Subsequently, Jive will drill deeper to drive business value from the real-time web with unique applications to bridge related internal activities and market-facing activities. New applications will use social intelligence to enrich the internal decision support process, fundamentally changing the way companies develop business initiatives, cultivate product innovation, and go to market. Other market-facing applications will use social intelligence to engage with customers and enrich the customer experience, helping companies establish clear competitive differentiation.
• Jive first signaled its belief in the power of harnessing real-time conversations in September 2009 when it announced the Market Engagement Solution, the first solution to combine social media monitoring with the power of Jive SBS. At that time, Jive announced an alliance with SMM provider Radian6. Jive will continue to support customers who use an integrated Jive-Radian6 solution and will continue its alliance with Radian6.

Resources and Links:

• Jive website
• Filtrbox website
• Screenshot of Jive Market Engagement
• Dave Hersh's Jive Talks blog post on acquisition
• Chris Morace's Jive Talks blog post on acquisition

About Jive Software

Jive frees people to engage in open, natural business conversations and workflows that typically are trapped inside of emails, phone calls or meetings. As the leading enterprise-class suite of SBS applications for Global 2000 companies and governments, Jive combines social networking software, collaboration software, and community software into the first solution to effectively manage employees, customers, and partners on a unified platform built for tens of thousands of users and millions of page views.

SOURCE Jive Software