Wildfire Interactive Inc, or Wildfire, was a software company that developed a social marketing
application that enabled businesses to create, optimize and measure their presence on social networks such as
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
,
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
,
Pinterest
Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically "ideas") on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboard ...
and
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
.
The
Redwood City
Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a po ...
startup
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...
was founded in 2008 by Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard.
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
acquired Wildfire in 2012 for a reported $450 million.
[ In 2014, Wildfire announced it would be integrated into Google's general adtech platform ]DoubleClick
DoubleClick Inc. was an advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google in March 2008. DoubleClick offered technology products and services that were sold primarily to adv ...
.
Company history
Wildfire was founded by Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard who needed to develop their own social-marketing campaign for their adventure-travel company Access Trips. The tool was originally called Promotion Builder and focused on developing social media marketing campaigns including sweepstakes, user-generated contests, quizzes and coupons. In the summer of 2009, the expanded platform was officially launched.[
In 2008, Ransom and Chuard applied for the Facebook Fund and received a $250,000 grant. Wildfire generated $100,000 in revenue within the first month of public launch. They raised a ]Series A round
A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...
of $4 million in May 2010 and a second round of funding of $10 million in 2012. Investors included Summit Partners
Summit Partners is an American private equity firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm focuses on investing in technology, healthcare, life sciences and other growth industries.
Background
Summit Partners was founded in 1984 by Roe St ...
, Facebook, Accel Partners
Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is an American venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional ...
and the Founder's Fund.[ From 2008–2012, Wildfire grew to include 400 employees.][ The company was named one of the top 10 places to work in the ]Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...
in 2011 and 2012.
Google purchased Wildfire in July 2012 for a reported $450 million.[ In 2014, Google announced that Wildfire's social analytics would be supported through integration into Google's general ad technology platform DoubleClick. Further investments into development would be limited and the application would not be adding features or signing new clients.][
]
Overview
Wildfire allowed clients to engage and monetize customers through Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
, Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
, Pinterest
Pinterest is an American image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information (specifically "ideas") on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboard ...
, LinkedIn
LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...
and Google+
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
.[ The app's components included Pages, Promotions, Ads, Messages, and Monitoring. Users could schedule content deployment to multiple properties with campaigns able to be customized depending on the size and the needs of the business.]
References
{{reflist
External links
Impact Of Social Media Companies To Economy
Social media companies
Google acquisitions
2012 mergers and acquisitions