• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, September 6, 2012

With consolidation in mind, enterprise social media platform HootSuite is buying (another) social media platform Seesmic.

“The companies are not disclosing the price, but we have been told it will be based on how well HootSuite manages to convert Seesmic users on to its own product,” TechCrunch reports.

Remarkably, “HootSuite and Seesmic were founded around the same time in 2008, though it took a year for Seesmic to move into its social network marketing platform development,” WebProNews writes. “HootSuite focuses heavily on marketing its services to its business clients, which it says includes 79 of the Fortune 100 companies.”

Post acquisition, “the Seesmic brand will eventually fade away as Hootsuite decides which of the social media client's features best fit Hootsuite's goals,” CNet reports.

Yet, while Seesmic’s days are now numbered, VentureBeat marvels at the start-up’s run. “Seesmic … is the king of the pivot, starting life as video commenting tool, becoming a Twitter client, transitioning to a client for social services in general, transmogrifying … into a customer relationship management system, and most recently, transforming back into a social-media cross-posting tool via its Ping.fm acquisition.”

Alas, “Seesmic chief executive Loic Le Meur had to lay off half of his staff back in March, and this buyout from HootSuite is partially a talent acquisition for the remaining roster,” according to AllTwitter.

“At the time [of the downsizing], Seesmic had been aiming to build some enterprise-grade social media tools and had gotten a $4 million funding boost from Salesforce.com and SoftBank to do just that,” AllThingsD notes.

All told, HootSuite currently claims about 4.5 million business users, but won’t say how many of them are paying customers.