There has been an important announcement making rounds which is not related to any giant in the tech world. However, its importance is crucial for many as social media marketing and analytics company, HubSpot Inc. tweeted on Thursday a dozen tweets for its newly acquired oneforty Inc. The acquiree has been providing services related to inbound marketing, which have been built all round social media content.
HubSpot has chosen a social networking site, Twitter to make this announcement which is unusual and catchy for the tech world as within couple of hours of them tweeting the acquisition story, the tweet was either mentioned or retweeted at least 400 times. This surely means that their weird strategy was successful in letting the world know about the acquisition. The tweets however were not lone as they were accompanied by “tweet this” buttons, hashtags and handles. HubSpot chose tweeting the announcement on Twitter as one has to tweet their messages in 140 characters and the acquiree’s company name had a major similarity, which got things clicked for the unusual idea.
CEO and founding member of oneforty, Laura Fitton said that she along with her team would be working with the HubSpot team as they would join the latter’s Cambridge office immediately. Laura has been well known because in March, Mass HighTech Women to Watch honoree list had her name.
HubSpot’s media relations rep, Kara Sassone said that while they were planning to make an announcement for the acquisition, they had a thought, ‘How do we make this stand out?’ She continued saying that they were of the thought that oneforty needs to be incorporated in a different way and tweeting the news was one in the best options which could have been chosen. Most of the comments and replies on this format suggested that tweeting an announcement was an effective way of passing on a news. But, as there is no rose without a thorn, the uniqueness did meet some criticism even as there was a tweet which read, “Most annoying press release format ever, Would love a regular PR with a list of tweetables instead.”
Criticism in this case was more or less a valid one which can be explained with the following details of one of the tweets which read ”Having @oneforty join our team and working with them on transforming marketing is exciting, said @bhalligan. #Hub140″. The odd point here is that who would one want to mention or retweet something which is said by a company’s CEO wherein he calls an acquisition to be “exciting”.
There was a launch last month made by oneforty which was for SocialBase Handbooks. This was a new version for the company’s enterprise-grade SocialBase On Call service for small business. It helped in managing and planning social campaigns. As per the press release of HubSpot, elements of SocialBase has even become a part of the acquirer’s family. As for now, after acquisition, HubSpot would have a tally of 285 employees which again was detailed by the company.
Talking about the acquisition, HubSpot didn’t disclose any terms which were made for the oneforty Inc.