Khoros, formerly Spredfast + Lithium, is a global customer engagement
software company that
provides
online community management,
social media marketing
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for b ...
,
social media analytics, digital care, and
content management
Content management (CM) are a set of processes and technologies that support the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. When stored and accessed via computers, this information may be more specifically referre ...
software and services to enterprise brands and agencies. Khoros owns over a dozen patents for social media marketing, online community, and care technologies.
Khoros is headquartered in
Austin, Texas
Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...
, with offices in
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
,
Portland
Portland most commonly refers to:
*Portland, Oregon, the most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon
*Portland, Maine, the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maine
*Isle of Portland, a tied island in the English Channel
Portland may also r ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
,
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
,
Bangalore
Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...
,
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
,
Sydney
Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...
, and
Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...
. The largest office, with almost 500 employees, is located in Austin. As of 2022, Khoros has over 1,500 employees and works with more than 2,000 brands globally.
History
Khoros is the product of a 2019 merger between two software companies: Spredfast and Lithium Technologies.
Spredfast
Spredfast was founded in 2008 by a group of software engineers and social marketing experts based in Austin, Texas. Spredfast grew quickly as a startup, raising almost $140 million in funding from 2008-2016.
In 2012, Spredfast launched their first annual user conference, the Smart Social Summit, with the goal of helping social media marketers learn from peers and industry leaders. The 2012 event was located in Austin, but due to its popularity, Spredfast held additional Smart Social Summits in New York and London in subsequent years. Speakers at these events have included
Michelle Obama
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama ( Robinson; born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United Stat ...
,
Arianna Huffington
Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington (; , ; born July 15, 1950) is a Greek American author, syndicated columnist and businesswoman. She is a co-founder of ''HuffPost'', the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, and the author of fifteen books. She ha ...
, and
Trevor Noah
Trevor Noah (born 20 February 1984) is a South African comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. He was the host of ''The Daily Show'', an American late-night talk show and satirical news program on Comedy ...
.
In April 2014, Spredfast acquired Mass Relevance, a social curation company whose technology aggregates and filters tweets to be displayed on broadcast TV. In August 2015, Spredfast acquired data-focused social marketing company Shoutlet.
Before announcing its merger with Lithium in 2018, Spredfast had more than 500 employees and more than 650 customers in 84 countries.
Lithium Technologies
Lithium was founded in 2001 by a group including
Dennis Fong, Lyle Fong, Michel Thouati, Kirk Yokomizo, John Joh, Nader Alizadeh, Michael Yang, and Matt Ayres. From the time of its founding to the time of its acquisition in 2017, Lithium secured over $150 million in funding through multiple rounds of investment.
In late 2008, Lithium completed a detailed analysis of a decade's worth of proprietary data that represents billions of interactions and millions of users across dozens of communities. This research helped Lithium contribute to a new standard for measuring online community health – the
Community Health Index.
On May 11, 2010, Lithium acquired
social media monitoring (SMM) provider Scout Labs, whose service allows brands to engage with their customers beyond the community and monitor, map, and measure customer conversations on the
social web
The social web is a set of social relations that link people through the World Wide Web. The social web encompasses how websites and software are designed and developed in order to support and foster social interaction. These online social int ...
.
In October 2012, Lithium acquired the Austin-based company Social Dynamx, which provided cloud-based software that allows large
call centers
A call centre (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth spelling) or call center (American English, American spelling; American and British English spelling differences#-re, -er, see spelling differences) is a managed capability th ...
to manage their social customer service. Lithium renamed the former Social Dynamx product "Lithium Social Web" and integrated it with its core Lithium Communities product.
On March 27, 2014: Lithium Technologies acquired
Klout, a software that rates users’ influence on social media. The higher a user’s “Klout Score,” the more influential they were on social media. Lithium closed the service on May 25, 2018.
In June 2015,
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
and Lithium signed a strategic alliance agreement to integrate Lithium social media and community data into
Microsoft Dynamics
Software
Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications.
The history of software is closely tied to the development of dig ...
.
Merger
In May 2017, Lithium announced that it had been acquired by
Vista Equity Partners
Vista Equity Partners Management, LLC is an American private equity firm that invests in software, data, and technology-enabled businesses. It is one of the largest private equity firms in the world, managing over $100 billion in assets. Vista Eq ...
, an Austin-based
private equity
Private equity (PE) is stock in a private company that does not offer stock to the general public; instead it is offered to specialized investment funds and limited partnerships that take an active role in the management and structuring of the co ...
firm focused on software, data, and technology-enabled businesses. In October 2018, Vista Equity Partners acquired Spredfast and announced that it would be merged with Lithium Technologies.
On March 5, 2019, Spredfast and Lithium formally announced their new name: Khoros, the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
word for chorus.
In August 2019, Khoros announced that Jack Blaha would take over as chief executive officer. Blaha was formerly CEO at Lone Wolf Technologies, another company in the Vista Equity Partners portfolio.
On September 23, 2019, Khoros opened its new office in Northwest Austin.
Acquisitions
In January 2021, Khoros acquired two companies: Topbox, an enterprise
customer experience
Customer experience, sometimes abbreviated to CX, is the totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral responses of a customer during all stages of the consumption process including pre-purchase, consumption, and post-purchase st ...
(CX) analytics software maker, and Flow.ai, a conversational AI platform for designing and managing
chatbots
A chatbot (originally chatterbot) is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of main ...
.
References
{{reflist
Companies based in Austin, Texas
Social media companies
Social media management platforms