Oracle said Tuesday that it’s arranged to acquire privately held Involver and its social marketing platform on undisclosed terms for its Cloud Marketing Suite.
The deal should close this summer.
Involver claims its licensed platform “supports 700,000 brands and agencies who manage audiences of more than 1.6 billion fans and provides marketers with everything they need to create rich experiences across the social web.”
That apparently means folks like Toys “R” Us and MTV building Facebook and Twitter pages good across mobile devices and tablets.
Its widgetry includes Involver SML, a markup language for social media, Visual SML, a drag-and-drop interface, an Audience Management Platform for publishing, monitoring, measuring, and managing social media content across multiple social networks from a central dashboard and a couple of dozen lightweight apps built to help marketers engage their audiences across the social web.
The company is a Facebook Preferred Developer and a technology provider for Facebook’s internal marketing team that built campaigns for the World Cup and the US elections.
Oracle said in its announcement that it expects its combination with Involver “to create the most advanced and comprehensive cloud-based social platform across marketing, sales and service touchpoints.”
Involver’s SML technology is supposed “to extend Oracle’s social platform to help customers more easily and cost-effectively collaborate and build engaging applications and social experiences across their social campaigns and sites.”
Oracle is currently reviewing Involver’s roadmap to see where it can be exploited and expects to throw more money at it. The five-year-old start-up has gotten where it is on $11 million in venture financing. Oracle will pair Involver’s SML with Java and its Oracle Database services.
Oracle’s already picking up social monitoring from Collective Intellect and social analytics from Vitrue to compete with Salesforce, which is buying Buddy Media, and Microsoft, which is buying Yammer.
Oracle says, “Companies are looking to harness the full potential of social media to increase brand loyalty, connect with potential customers and anticipate buyers’ needs.”