Lithium Acquires Brand-Tracking Startup Scout Labs

Lithium Technologies, a privately held provider of social networking and online community-building software, on Tuesday announced the acquisition of brand-tracking startup Scout Labs.

"We have wide social media data ... They have deep customer and community data ... Together, we create a true Social CRM platform with a lens on the whole customer," Jennifer Zeszut, founder and CEO of Scout Labs, said in a blog post on Tuesday.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but TechCrunch put the cost to Lithium in the range of $20 million to $25 million.

Taking on top conversation trackers like Nielsen BuzzMetrics and TNS Cymfony, Scout Labs came out of beta early last year with what it billed as a more economical consumer sentiment-tracking service for agencies and marketers.

Taking the place of costly white papers and consultancy fees, the Web-based automated software allows clients to glean their own quantitative and qualitative data by monitoring and analyzing consumer conversations across the increasingly vast social media landscape.

Using natural language and text processing techniques, Scout Labs provides clients with a suite of analysis tools, including real-time sentiment detection.

At launch, the San Francisco-based company boasted a client list of some 200 customer-focused companies including Netflix, Hewlett-Packard, Target, Nike and StubHub, along with agencies, including AKQA, Organic and Tribal DDB.

Depending upon how many platforms, or "workspaces," and how many concurrent text searches clients need, software costs range from $100 to $750 a month. For that, clients gain access to automatically generated metrics and analysis, including real-time sentiment scoring, buzz volume and share-of-voice calculations, conversation digests, trend-spotting and email reports.

Post acquisition, none of that will change, Zeszut assured on Tuesday. "The Scout Labs team, the product, the brand, the culture, the commitment to actionable insight, ease of use and affordability --all are alive and well," she said.

At the beginning of the year, Lithium raised $18 million in its third round of funding. New investors included DAG Ventures and Tenaya Capital, which joined existing investors Benchmark Capital, Emergence Capital and Shasta Ventures.

Founded in 2001, Emeryville, California-based Lithium's clients include AT&T, Best Buy, PayPal, Research In Motion Limited, Sony, and Univision.

Last June, Lithium acquired San Francisco-based Keibi Technologies, a developer of platforms that allow online communities to monitor the appropriateness of user-generated content. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Lithium's myriad rivals include Mzinga, Leverage, LiveWorld, and Networked Insights, along with new media holding company Demand Media, which acquired rival Pluck for a reported $75 million in mid-2008.

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