It’s Christmas for Buffer already! The social media management platform has acquired Respondly, a social media customer service and brand monitoring tool. According to the official announcement, there are no plans of integrating the new acquisition into the Buffer platform, yet.
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Respondly specialises in customer support, on Twitter mainly. It offers a variety of features, such as tweet tracking, collaboration tools, reporting and keyword searching for measuring brand sentiment. It is currently used by many established brands and platforms, such as Automattic – the maker of WordPress, Disqus, Slack and many many more.
In other words, not only did Buffer avoid the cost of building a similar tool, but it also got to acquire retainer accounts that pay for the service as well. Moreover, the acquisition helps Buffer expand its offering and transform from a social media marketing platform, to a complete toolbox for social media managers which will handle content, customer service and image creation – via its Pablo tool.
According to the same announcement, all Buffer tools -Buffer itself, Pablo and Respondly- will stay as standalone apps and platforms. As Joel Gascoigne states, simplicity is key to the service as it’s better to “build something truly incredible that solves a very specific need rather than a solution that tries to be everything to everyone.”
While Buffer is known for its transparency policy, the exact amount of the acquisition was not revealed, due to contractual restrictions. However, what is known is that Buffer will proceed to rebranding and renaming Respondly to Respond, a simpler brand name.
Buffer has had a busy year, launching a calendar feature for its platform and growing its team. We are pretty sure that there more updates underway. In the meantime, you can sign up for early access to the all new Respond tool here.
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