Adobe's move to acquire social content platform startup LiveFyre is far from startling, given its ambitions in the marketing cloud space and the companies' already close relationship. But it nonetheless emphasizes the notion that customers' voices are the most powerful influences—both pro and con—on your marketing strategy.
LiveFyre is known for its platform that handles visitor comments on websites, as well as Storify, which provides users with a tool for stitching together content from various social media channels into a curated document. Storify is available in a free version for non-professional use, as well as an edition geared toward enterprise content teams.
Overall, LiveFyre will give customers the ability to grab massive amounts of user-generated content and then push it to all manner of marketing channels, such as websites, email campaigns, digital billboards and mobile apps, Adobe said in a statement. LiveFyre also gives Adobe even further penetration into major brands, with more than 1,500 customers, including Coca-Cola, CNN, News Corp and Major League Baseball.
Adobe had already participated in a funding round for LiveFyre. It plans to fold its capabilities into the Adobe Experience Manager suite, according to a statement.
The deal is expected to close shortly. Terms were not disclosed.
For Adobe, the acquisition makes plenty of sense, says Constellation Research founder R "Ray" Wang.
"LiveFyre's commenting platform and strong social capabilities are a great fit with Adobe Experience Manager," he says. "When you tie it back to the capabilities to then put offers, campaigns, and additional next best actions in AEM, customers will have an opportunity to complete the marketing lifecycle."
A key piece of the LiveFyre acquisition are the systems integrators that work with Adobe. They'll be able to take the product to market more quickly than LiveFyre could have done on its own, Wang says.
AEM Sites is already integrated with LiveFyre, with the Assets, Communities and Analytics modules currently on the development roadmap, Adobe said.
It's expected that Adobe will preserve LiveFyre's partnerships with the likes of Salesforce and OpenText, which compete with AEM on a number of fronts.
The Bottom Line
To revisit our opening point, however, this deal is all about the content LiveFyre can collect, and what it says about the voice of customers.
"User-generated content is the most highly regarded content, more so than brand-created content," says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Dr. Natalie Petouhoff. "It tends to bemore authentic because it's from real people, versus having been branded, cleansed, approved and pushed thorough many levels of approval. Brand-created content can be bland if the brands doesn't give it's content creators much freedom. All in all, it's a good move to drive to better authenticity in content."
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