Social Media Continues To Grow

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Social Media Continues To Grow

by Mark Hazleton on 05/23/2011 09:49 0 comments , 130 views

Add this to LinkedIN’s IPO and it seems we are in a hot social media market.

As a longtime BzzAgent, I always thought that this company had a big future in providing consumers a voice in new products.

Congrats to the entire team at BZZAgent.

Clipped from adage.com

Tesco Acquires Social-Marketing Firm BzzAgent for $60 Million

U.K. Retailer Buys Into Startup’s 800,000 Product-Sampling Volunteers

U.K. retail giant Tesco has acquired U.S. social-media marketing firm BzzAgent for around $60 million, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal price, which includes an earn-out, underscores the growing interest among major retailers to buy into digitally derived advertising strategies.

BzzAgent, a Boston-based startup, specializes in creating word-of-mouth campaigns for big companies such as Unilever, L’Oreal and Michelin. The company enlists over 800,000 people in the U.S. to try out certain products, which they can choose to write about to their Facebook friends or Twitter followers. The company does not pay any of its consumer volunteers, and they are not required to say anything about the products.

BzzAgent will remain a separate business, but plans to work closely with Dunnhumby to expand its base of consumer volunteers using its large database of household and consumer information. BzzAgent’s 60 full-time employees will be staying on as part of the acquisition.

The deal marks the emerging interest among retailers to tap into social media. In April, Walmart paid $300 million for Kosmix, a technology that organizes social-media content, from articles and tweets to YouTube clips and Facebook shares, into categories. Walmart hopes to take advantage of all those so-called social signals to better understand consumers’ sentiments on products as well as their buying habits.