Social Business Is Here: Jive and HootSuite Make the Wall of Fame

By Jim Lundy

In 2013, social is shifting away from a cobbled together bunch of features to a set of offerings that allow people to get work done. We call it social business and to net it out, it is the desire to get work done, work that involves other people and has people as part of the process (versus people watching the process).

Social applications are at the heart of social business and we are seeing this shift as an evolution of social. Two of the players in social business, Jive Software and HootSuite are not direct competitors, but they are great examples—proof points that social business is here to stay.

Social Business and Jive Software

Jive Software isn’t new; in fact, they have been busy pushing the envelope of enterprise social networking since the beginning, back when social meant wikis, blogs, and discussions. Jive was one of the first firms to take investment (2008) and they have gone public and done very well. Few have executed as well as Jive. In fact, one could look at Jive ‘s success and say that it was one of the forcing functions that made Microsoft make a move and buy Yammer (see Aragon’s First Cut: Microsoft Buys Yammer).

The key thing we have noticed about Jive, is that they have listened to their customers and adopted their social platform for more specific business use cases. This is the key trend we see. Use cases are king and features are not enough to win in 2013. Others could learn from Jive.

Social Business: HootSuite Gets Noticed with $165M Series B Round

HootSuite also isn’t a new name, and yesterday, they got noticed with a $165 million investment.   The rise of social marketing tools has happened in parallel and in some cases, the consolidation of that space has occurred sooner than the enterprise social networking space.

HootSuite, which has done more in the social media management part of social marketing, remains one of the standalone players along with others such as Marketo, which focuses more on pure marketing automation. Both capabilities are needed in a marketing department. The HootSuite investment comes with a price tag, as Accel, Insight Ventures, and Omers all got seats on the HootSuite board.

Social Business and the Race to Build the Marketing Suite

The race to build the marketing suite is on. Other major technology vendors (Adobe, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce) have been working hard to try to buy the tools to create the perfect marketing suite (see our recent post on Oracle Buys Eloqua).

Some are having more success than others. One thing is clear. There are more HootSuites out there. Some of our Social Hot Vendors from 2102 are ones to watch, such as ReadyPulse and Shoutlet. We expect to see more funding for them as well.

Look for more commentary on social business next week.