Tag: Buddy Media

Buddy Media CEO Dispels Fear with Video on VSD

Yesterday, we brought you the news that enterprise cloud computing giant, Salesforce.com, intends to acquire Buddy Media. It’s great news for Michael Lazerow, chairman and co-founder of Buddy Media who will be on the receiving end of the near $690 million deal.

Now we are hearing from Lazerow in a totally different capacity. In a very recent YouTube video of his own creation the successful media creator addresses his struggle with a lifelong heart condition (VSD) that rendered him lifeless several times, only to be saved by multiple surgeries and advanced medical technology.

Interestingly, Lazerow doesn’t speak a word in the video. The entire narrative takes place on his iPad in what appears to be his home office. It’s obvious he is overcome with joy over the success of Buddy Media and the overwhelming deal he has just made with Salesforce.com making him a billionaire.

The overarching theme is living without fear and how meeting death head on (literally) allowed him to see no need for fear in the way he lives his life. It’s an interesting way to celebrate success, but also a different side of business that we don’t often see. Take a look at his video and decide what you think about life’s struggles and people’s ability to make a difference.

June 5, 2012
Salesforce.com to Acquire Buddy Media

Enterprise cloud computing company, Salesforce.com has entered into a deal with social media platform provider, Buddy Media, to acquire their company and pay them almost $690 million in cash and common stock.

Salesforce.com hopes to have the acquisition of Buddy Media complete before the end of October this year.

Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com comments on the acquisition of Buddy Media:

“Salesforce.com now has the number one players in social listening and marketing – Radian6 and Buddy Media,”

“With CMOs surpassing CIOs in spend on technology within the next five years, our Marketing Cloud leadership will allow us to capitalize on this massive opportunity.”

Michael Lazerow, co-founder and CEO Buddy Media comments on the power of joining with Salesforce.com:

“Buddy Media’s mission is to eliminate the current state of anarchy in social marketing,”

“With the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, marketers will be able to unify their efforts to better organize their teams, optimize their social programs and deliver real business results.”

Marcel LeBrun, SVP of Salesforce Radian6 also comments on the addition of Buddy Media’s unique addition to the Salesforce portfolio of solutions:

“Social media has caused the biggest transformation in marketing since the Mad Men era, causing CMOs to completely re-think their strategies,”

“By bringing together market leaders Radian6 and Buddy Media, we are doubling down on the Salesforce Marketing Cloud to provide CMOs with the ability to manage the entire social marketing lifecycle.”

Here’s some financial data on the impact to Salesforce.com from the acquisition of Buddy Media:

Q2 FY13: Given an expected fiscal third quarter close date, this transaction is not expected to have any material impact to salesforce.com’s fiscal second quarter FY13 revenue or EPS results, previously guided on May 17, 2012.

Q3 FY13: Salesforce.com expects to provide revenue and EPS guidance for its fiscal third quarter FY13, including the effects of this transaction, when it announces results for its second fiscal quarter, ended July 31, 2012.

FY13: The acquisition is expected to increase revenues by approximately $20 million to $25 million, and to reduce non-GAAP EPS by approximately $0.14 to $0.15 in the second half of the year ending January 31, 2013 depending on the final acquisition date. To reflect the impact of this acquisition, the company is updating the full-year guidance it provided on May 17, 2012. Specifically, the company now expects FY13 revenue in the range of approximately $2.990 billion to $3.025 billion, and FY13 non-GAAP EPS in the range of approximately $1.45 to $1.49.

Non-GAAP EPS excludes the impact of the following non-cash items: stock-based compensation, amortization of purchased intangibles from acquisitions, and the amortization of debt discount on the company’s convertible senior notes, as well as the tax consequences associated with these items. The financial impact of the acquisition on a GAAP basis cannot be estimated until the allocation of the purchase price is completed following the closing of the acquisition. However, salesforce.com currently expects that the dilutive impact of the acquisition to EPS will be significantly greater on a GAAP basis than a non-GAAP basis.

Buddy media brings along social media marketing accounts from giants like Ford, Hewlett Packard, L’Oreal and Mattel. They currently serve over 1000 customers and provide campaigns on platforms like Twitter, Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Linkedin.

June 4, 2012
Salesforce to Acquire Buddy Media

Enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce is set to acquire Buddy Media, the makers fo social enterprise software. The purchase would augment Salesforce’s enterprise offerings with a ready-made solution for social media brand management.

The news was first reported by All Things D, which cites unnamed sources as saying the two companies have agreed to terms of the sale, though the purchase is not yet final. Buddy Media will be bought for more than $800 million, a bid by Salesforce that evidently beat out a lower one by Google.

Salesforce is an enterprise cloud computing company whose mission is “the end of software.” To that end, the company provides numerous cloud solutions for businesses, including Sales Cloud sales force automation, Service Cloud customer service support, and Radian6 social media monitoring, which Salesforce acquired las year. The company is beating earnings estimates and rising in prominence as one of the top cloud solutions companies in the U.S. It has also recently updated its Chatter cloud collaboration service to include real-time messaging.

Buddy Media specializes in Facebook advertising. It manages a brand’s total social media presence on Facebook, maintaining pages, app, ads, and offers. The company also manages brand image on other social networks such as Twitter and Google +. Buddy Media claims to have eight of the top ten global advertisers as clients. Earlier this year Buddy Media appointed a new president to the company, Susan St. Ledger.

With Facebook now public and desperately trying to raise revenue forecasts, it makes sense that Buddy Media would be a hot commodity. With this acquisition, Salesforce is positioning itself to be the middleman between advertisers and Facebook. And with both Radian6 and Buddy Media, Salesforce is now the go-to solutions company for social media advertising.

(via All Things D)

May 30, 2012
Buddy Media Welcomes New President

Buddy Media, the social enterprise software solution provider of choice for many of the top global advertisers is welcoming a new edition to their staff today. Susan St. Ledger will be taking on the role of president at Buddy. She will be working directly with CEO Michael Lazerow to coordinate client service teams and oversee company sales.

She brings with her seven years of experience as senior vice president at Salesforce.Com. She is well qualified for her new position and Buddy Media is excited to have her on their staff. Other organizations where St. Ledger was able to craft her skills include Sun Microsystems, Inc., where she delivered their first ever one billion dollar earning quarter in 2004. Very impressive!

Founder and CEO of Buddy Media, Michael Lazerow comments on the new edition to his executive team:

“It’s clear that organizations which power connections with their customers will create shareholder value, and those that don’t will lose,”

“Susan’s unparalleled experience in enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) sales shows her commitment to our company mission and helps us to successfully scale and serve the largest brands and agencies around the world. We’re proud that top executives in our industry recognize that Buddy Media is the clear leader and are eager to join us.”

St. Ledger comments on the challenge she faces with her new position at Buddy Media:

“Buddy Media was my first choice, as it has the best products and team in the market,”

“The company continues to innovate and stay nimble, while scaling quickly to market demand. With more than a decade of experience in this space, there is no doubt I’m going to hit the ground running on day one.”

I am sure St. Ledger will do well in her new position. She joins the West Coast branch of Buddy based out of San Francisco, CA. Buddy Media is a Worldwide provider of media advertising software provider.

March 8, 2012
Buddy Media Acquires Facebook Ads API Partner Brighter Option

One of the world’s largest social enterprise software companies, Buddy Media, announced today that it has acquired Brighter Option, a London-based Facebook Ads API partner providing innovative social ad management software. By adding this valuable feather in its cap, Buddy Media will become the company in the world to combine social publishing, applications, analytics, commerce and paid advertising in a unified software suite.

The acquisition was six months in the making, during which time Buddy Media, the most award winning social enterprise software company, examined more than twenty Facebook ad partners to determine which company boasted the most scalable technology. Ultimately, Brighter Option proved to be the creme de la creme of advertising tech partners. Last quarter, for example, the company’s social ad management software managed more than 92.5 billion impressions for more than 291 advertisers in 42 countries.

”Customers want to manage more of their social and digital programs in one software suite,” said Buddy Media founder and CEO Michael Lazerow. “Through Buddy Media, marketers can more easily manage and be more effective with their social and digital programs than with other incomplete solutions on the market. Smart social content gets the conversation started, then social ads provide scale, which in turn leads to larger owned media channels. Its a virtuous cycle of increasing returns for brands.”

Brighter Option stands out among social advertising software because it offers a self-service tool for ad agencies, game developers, brands, retailers, or basically any other company that wants to advertise on Facebook. Essentially, it’s the only Facebook ads API partner that allows clients to manage their own Facebook advertising.

“Joining forces with Buddy Media will enable us to provide a comprehensive social marketing software suite unlike anything available on the market,” said Peter Goodman, CEO and founder, Brighter Option. “Brands and agencies simply cannot have their advertising teams and community management teams working in silos. Now, for the first time, they wont have to.”

Continuing from a post on Buddy Media’s official blog, the company believes that advertising on Facebook is the optimal business endeavor for reaching an audience efficiently and effectively.

Buddy Media software now enables everything that our clients need to do on the Facebook Page platform, as well as all their Facebook ads needs. We support today all Facebook ad formats, including the new Page post ad units available only via the API. By showing complete Page post engagement metrics, our clients get more context than any other ad management solution and even Facebook’s own tools.

At least all of the ads we see on the sidebar of Facebook’s homepage will hopefully be a little more relevant to all us. I’m tired of ads suggesting I need help with bedwetting (seriously, those are totally unnecessary).

February 27, 2012
Super Bowl Social Media Buzz

The recent Super Bowl was the most watched television program in history accumulating over 111 million viewers for the big game. With so much media attention, it’s a given that the Twitter-verse and Facebook would ignite with opinions, emotions, posts, tweets and everything in between.

Recent data confirms that this is true, in fact, the info shows a 60 percent increase in buzz from previous years.

Engagement rates– Actively “engaging” in Tweeting, Posting, Pinning, Stumbling, etc… about Super Bowl related information.

This first graph shows engagement rates for Super Bowl and non Super bowl related posts from December 2011 to February 2012.

The second graph reveals engagement rates for game and non-game related posts during the actual game.

The third graphic details daily engagement rates from January 2012 to February 2012.

The fourth and final graphic shows hourly engagement rates for Super Bowl related posts on game day.

February 7, 2012
Google+ Page Management Via HootSuite, Buddy Media And Others

Google announced that it giving six companies the ability to implement Google+ Page management into their tools, so businesses have an easier time integrating Google+ into their social media management mix.

These include: Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, HootSuite, Involver, and Vitrue.

“Businesses can create and manage their pages directly through Google+,” says Google+ Pages Product Manager Sarsa McKinley. “We are committed to working on enhancements and innovative features to offer businesses more flexibility and power to run their pages. We also recognize that some businesses use social media management companies to manage their presence across multiple social networks.”

“We are currently working with these companies so that we can experiment and get feedback,” she says. “They were selected based on their extensive experience helping brands and businesses manage and analyze their presence on social networks.”

Each of the companies will be offering a subset of their customers the ability to manage their Google+ Circles, publish to the social network and moniitor usage, Google says. Presumably, this will all be expanded to more customers in time.

Google has a page for third party management tools here, which gives you access to these various companies via email, their sites and Google+.

Here are 10 Google+ Page Tips for Your Business.

November 16, 2011
Demand Media’s Pluck Teams Up with Buddy Media on Facebook Page Apps

Demand Media announced that it has entered a partnership with Buddy Media to extend Demand Media’s Pluck social applications into the Facebook ecosystem.

Buddy Media has built a business out of creating Facebook tools for businesses, and it counts Target, Johnson & Johnson, ABC, and many other big brands among its clients.

Pluck VP, Marketing Jason Jaynes explains, “Our first application for Facebook pages, Pluck Forums is available starting today. Using the Buddy Media platform you can now quickly embed the Pluck Forums running on your site directly into your Facebook page. This allows you to bring the conversation already happening on your own sites to Facebook where a significant portion of your consumers and fans spend their time. Even better, it allows your consumers and fans to engage in the conversation without ever leaving Facebook.”

This is similar to how Facebook’s new comments system operates, but this is more than just a blog comments system. Pluck points to an example of the platform in use by the Dallas Cowboys, which have a fan community set up, in which fans can interact (via the same conversation) from the Cowboys’ site or from their Facebook Page.

“This announcement builds on our history of working with Facebook,” he adds. “We have been a close partner with Facebook since we launched our integration with Facebook Connect in 2008. Since then, we were the first community platform to integrate with Facebook for Websites in 2010 and now we are the first community platform to enable seamless conversations across your own website and your Facebook page.”

Last week, Demand Media announced its acquisition of CoverItLive, a live event coverage platform.

March 9, 2011