Oracle Buys Another Social Network Startup, Involver

Published: Jul 10, 2012
Updated: Feb 2, 2021
2 minute read
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Oracle on July 10 bought its third social networking-related software startup in two months, acquiring cloud-based marketing-service provider Involver.

Terms of the transaction were not released.

Involver’s software enables companies to create and deploy customized social-media and Internet marketing campaigns for sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

On June 5, Oracle bought Collective Intellect, which markets a cloud-based application that helps companies understand and respond to customers’ conversations on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

On May 23, the Redwood City-based IT giant acquired Vitrue, a cloud-based social media marketing campaign creator that enables customers to create, manage and measure social media marketing campaigns on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and Google+.

“The combination of Involver with Oracle is expected to create the most advanced and comprehensive cloud-based social solution, across marketing, sales and service touch points,” Involver President and CEO Don Beck said in a blog post.

“Our technology is expected to extend Oracle€™s social platform to help customers more easily and cost effectively collaborate and build engaging applications and social experiences across social networks and the Open Graph.”

Oracle, which launched the Oracle Cloud only last month, is putting a large investment into building a menu of social-networking services from which subscribers can choose. The company purchased RightNow Technologies in October 2011 for $1.5 billion, then annexed career-management software service Taleo for $1.9 billion in February 2012.

Oracle competitors Salesforce.com and SAP also have been scooping up social-networking startups in the last few months.

The transaction is expected to close in September, Beck said.

Chris Preimesberger

Chris J. Preimesberger is Editor Emeritus of eWEEK. In his 16 years and more than 5,000 articles at eWEEK, he distinguished himself in reporting and analysis of the business use of new-gen IT in a variety of sectors, including cloud computing, data center systems, storage, edge systems, security and others. In February 2017 and September 2018, Chris was named among the 250 most influential business journalists in the world (https://richtopia.com/inspirational-people/top-250-business-journalists/) by Richtopia, a UK research firm that used analytics to compile the ranking. He has won several national and regional awards for his work, including a 2011 Folio Award for a profile (https://www.eweek.com/cloud/marc-benioff-trend-seer-and-business-socialist/) of Salesforce founder/CEO Marc Benioff--the only time he has entered the competition. Previously, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. He has been a stringer for the Associated Press since 1983 and resides in Silicon Valley.

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