Oracle Snags Involver, Latest Social Media Takeover
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL), the No. 1 database developer, said it will acquire Involver, a five-year-old social media software developer, its third sector acquisition in three months.
Terms weren't disclosed.
San Francisco-based Involver, though, has described itself as a principal developer for Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), the No. 1 social networking site, particularly its internal marketing team, which could leave the newly public Facebook at a disadvantage.
Involver developed software called Social Markup Language or SML as well as its sibling, Visual SML which allows developers to build pixel-perfect application development. Marketers can use it to devise a customized application without special coding.
Besides Facebook, other Involver customers have included Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), the No. 1 search engine, which deploys it for its Google+ Business pages; Germany's Puma Group, the footwear giant, which used it for an Olympics promotion, and the White House, which uses it for presidential conferences.
Involver raised more than $19 million in venture capital from Bessemer Ventures, Western Technology Investment and Cervin Ventures.
CEO Don Beck was brought in last year after decades in the software sector. He'd last been with Postini, the e-mail service acquired by Google.
The company's co-founders, Rahim Fazal, 26, and Noah Horton, 27, are computer experts and serial entrepreneurs. Fazal sold a web-hosting company he started in high school for $1.5 million and another to NeoEdge, now known as Blue Noodle Inc., which specializes in software for advertising agencies.
So far this year, Oracle, of Redwood Shores, Calif., has acquired Collective Intellect, whose products monitor and analyze comments, as well as Vitrue, whose software can be used for network management in the social sphere.
This week Oracle announced Oracle Commerce, or software that features pre-built components to allow business teams to quickly launch new brands and websites. The offering mergers the company's ATG Commerce with software from Endeca, the Cambridge, Mass., specialist in unstructured data that was acquired last October.
The product appears intended to compete against other software from International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM), the No. 2 computer company, which has a massive social media effort and sells products through most of the same verticals as Oracle.
Oracle reported cash and investments exceeding $30.7 billion in its fiscal year ended May 31.
Shares of Oracle rose 46 cents to $29.27 in Friday afternoon trading while those of IBM rose $2.93 to $186.02. Facebook rose 3 cents to $30.84.
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