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Lithium Snaps Up Scout Labs
As more and more companies seem to be jumping on the social media bandwagon,
Lithium Technologies is beefing up its services with the acquisition of a startup called Scout Labs.
The news was first reported yesterday in TechCrunch, prior to any official announcement. Chief Executive and Co-Founder, Lyle Fong, confirmed the acquisition to VentureBeat today, and also said that the rumored price of $20-25 million is correct.
Lithium builds customer communities for businesses like Barnes & Noble and Lenovo, but Fong said companies are increasingly interested in monitoring what customers are saying on social services like Twitter. So Emeryville, Calif.-based Lithium went looking for a social media monitoring service. It settled on Scout Labs, Fong said, because the two companies shared a philosophy that these tools shouldn’t just be used by marketing and customer service teams: “Every person in the company should be closer to the customer.”
VentureBeat's Anthony Ha interviewed Lithium CEO & Co-Founder, Lyle Fong, to find out more.