[Updated 04/02/14, 12:42 pm. See below.] Two Austin social-media software companies—Spredfast and Mass Relevance—announced today they are merging.
Rod Favaron, Spredfast’s CEO, says the combining of the firms gives them “unparalleled ability” to stay on top of market trends to enable clients to build relationships with customers through social media.
[Story updated to include quotes from Rod Favaron.] Both he and Mass Relevance CEO, Sam Decker, began to see the opportunity in a joint company January. “It was obvious, he says. “They were a perfect fit to our platform with no overlap.”
While Spredfast’s software gives companies a platform through which to manage their social channels—from the brand out, Favaron says—Mass Relevance takes the public social media data relevant to a company and curates a stream that appears on a website, TV channel, or other media.
“Now we share this content across all the channels, social and digital non-social,” he says. “There is nobody that looks like this. Nobody takes 100-percent growth companies and puts them together.”
Combined, the companies will operate under the Spredfast name and have more than 600 customers. The company says it now manages the social campaigns for more than 1 billion brands across 84 countries, including the top five TV networks. Spredfast now has a total of 650 employees and 100 open positions, Favaron added.
Spredfast raised $32.5 million in Series D funding in January to adapt its software-as-a-service platform to reflect the evolving nature of social media. The company, which was founded in 2008, has about 150 employees and has customers including General Mills, Whole Foods, and REI. Mass Relevance was founded three years ago and has clients such as GE, Microsoft, and Target.
