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Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Kana buys Overtone: It's a run on 'social listening' companies

By | April 5, 2011, 6:53am PDT

Summary: Kana Software has acquired Overtone, which provides social media listening platforms. Kana’s deal comes a week after Salesforce bought Radian6 for $326 million.

Kana Software said Tuesday that it has acquired Overtone, which provides social media listening platforms. Kana’s deal comes a week after Salesforce bought Radian6 for $326 million.

Yes folks there’s a run on social media and customer listening companies. These platforms allow companies to monitor social outlets like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all at once. With this repository there’s a layer of analytics.

Here’s a look at Overtone’s OpenMic software in a nutshell:

Kana, which specializes in customer service applications, said it plans to integrate Overtone’s platform into its software. In other words, customer service agents will be able to monitor customers across all mediums.

Like Salesforce, Kana emphasized the importance of listening to social streams to garner customer insights. Overture has a text analytics engine, dashboards and enterprise reporting and integration features. Privately held Overtone also has an impressive customer list that includes AT&T, Procter & Gamble, Adobe, HP, Microsoft and Starwood.

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Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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RE: Kana buys Overtone: It's a run on 'social listening' companies
a6498189 8th Oct
@VertigoBlaze

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Thanks for writing this. I've linked to your article from my company's blog (the link is below). Maybe we could help drive traffic to your content as your articles are often informative and interesting. http://think.blytheco.com/enterprise/salesforce-acquisition-of-radian6-too-much-too-soon/
@VertigoBlaze

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