Back-channel emails are a wonderful thing. A couple of CEOs have pointed out how few of the vendors ever featured in Forrester's reports on social media analysis are still independent. So, in the spirit of the filmmaker who's not sure how to end a movie, let's roll the "where are they now?" clip.
The first report in the space was Peter Kim's Forrester Wave: Brand Monitoring (September 2006), which introduced us to seven companies:
- Biz360
Acquired by Attensity in 2010. - Brandimensions
Folded into its BrandProtect sibling in early 2009. - Cymfony
Acquired in 2007 by TNS, which was acquired by WPP in 2008. Cymfony is now part of WPP's Kantar Media. - Factiva
Dow Jones bought out Reuters' interest in Factiva in 2007. The Factiva Insight product is now known as Dow Jones Insight. - MotiveQuest
Still doing what they do. - Nielsen BuzzMetrics
Nielsen bought the rest of BuzzMetrics in 2007 and used it as the core of NM Incite, its joint venture with McKinsey, in 2010. - Umbria
Acquired by J.D. Power & Associates in 2008.
Suresh Vittal's January 2009 report, Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms also covered seven companies, two of which two were not in the 2006 report:
- Radian6
Acquired by Salesforce.com this week, but you knew that. - Visible Technologies
Still doing what they do.
- Alterian
Entered the market through its 2009 acquisition of Techrigy. - Collective Intellect
Still doing what they do. - Converseon
Still doing what they do. - evolve24
Acquired by Maritz Research in 2010.
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