Salesforce combining Radian6 with Buddy Media to create Social Studio

Salesforce.com is releasing Social Studio, a new product that combines features from its Radian6 social-media-monitoring technology with the content publishing capabilities of its Buddy Media software for marketers.

Social media has rapidly gained prominence as a target for marketers, but many companies are using a slew of different tools, resulting in a disjointed, inefficient effort overall, said Marcel LeBrun, senior vice president of social products.

Social Studio brings together a series of elements aimed at giving marketing teams a single platform on which to work with one another.

Components include team workspaces; detailed and collaborative calendars; content creation tools for publishing on Facebook, Twitter and other social sites; social-media-monitoring and engagement capabilities; and analytics showing how successful various pieces of content are.

"This is not an integration, it's not stitched together," LeBrun said. "It's one brand-new product."

Social Studio is being launched with the help of a number of partners. It's tied into Getty Images and Shutterstock, giving users the ability to pull in photographs from those services. Other launch partners include Trendspottr, which helps marketers see what's hot on social media and determine whether to create content that takes advantage of the trend.

Pricing for Social Studio begins at US$1,500 per month, with costs going up based on a number of consumption metrics, such as the number of social media handles a company wants.

Existing Radian6 and Buddy Media customers will get access to Social Studio at no additional charge. Customers who only license one of those products currently will still get access on a limited basis, according to LeBrun.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com