Achi news desk-
When Irina Novoselsky considers social media, she is certain that the next decade will be nothing like the last as consumers increasingly allow the online world to shape almost every aspect of their lives.
“We’re big believers that social media is about to be massively disrupted,” said the chief executive of Hootsuite Inc., a Vancouver-based company that makes social media management and marketing software.
Novoselsky, who celebrated her first year at the top of Hootsuite in mid-January, is determined not to let the 16-year-old company be left behind as the industry evolves from status updates and creating shots to using user data to lead everything from marketing. to major business decisions.
That’s partly why she brokered a deal, announced Monday, that will see Hootsuite acquire Talkwalker. The Luxembourg-based consumer intelligence company sells services that help companies assess the effectiveness and engagement around their public relations campaigns and compare their social media performance with competitors.
Hootsuite would not disclose the value and structure of the deal, but Novoselsky pitched it as a “natural progression” of the relationship the two tech companies formed over seven years of each business offering some of the other’s services to its clients.
The acquisition comes as several social media platforms face turmoil. Many users have abandoned X, formerly known as Twitter, since billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk bought the platform amid ongoing concerns about the spread of misinformation and hate speech on the platform, which some researchers say has be on the rise under Musk.
At the same time, TikTok is facing a US ban due to concerns about its Chinese ownership.
Novoselsky brushed off concerns about TikTok’s future and what a ban could mean for her company, saying “there is no significant impact on our customers” and noting that many of Hootsuite’s clients are on multiple social media platforms.
With Talkwalker and Hootsuite united, she’s confident the company will be able to survive the constant evolution of platforms along with that social media disruption Novoselsky sees coming.
“What’s existed in the last 10 years has been very much about FOMO (fear of missing out) and ‘I have to be on social media because my competitors are,'” Novoselsky said.
“The world is changing. It’s no longer about likes and shares and exposure. He digs in beyond those things.”
Now, companies are increasing their focus on capturing every piece of data they can and squeezing as much value out of those insights as possible.
“Five billion people in the world are on social media, 99 percent of businesses are on social media and yet the No. 1 pain point we keep hearing from our customers is ‘We don’t know how to attach value to what we say. ‘does,’” Novoselsky said.
“That’s a huge opportunity.”
And Novoselsky, whose family immigrated to the United States from Ukraine in the late ’80s with less than $300 and is best known as the executive behind the turnaround of human resources technology company CareerBuilder, is up for the challenge. .
Her plan to navigate social media disruption leans heavily on the Talkwalker connection.
The company helps with tasks like “social listening,” where companies can collect what’s being said about them or their competitors online and assess how much of the conversation is either positive or negative. is negative. Talkwalker covers more than 30 social media platforms.
He also has the ability to predict.
“You can put content you want to launch, you can put data you want to drop and it will, based on analytics, tell you how it thinks it’s going to do,” Novoselsky said.
Such offerings have already garnered Talkwalker a strong slate of clients, which Novoselsky said are primarily in Europe, the Middle East and Africa — areas where Hootsuite could grow.
Asked if she anticipates job cuts as she integrates the two companies, Novoselsky said, “We’re not doing this for cost synergies. We are very focused on driving value for our customers.”
Hootsuite has made cuts before, laying off 30 percent of its staff as part of a global restructuring in August 2022 and then another five percent in November 2022.
A third round of cuts worth about seven percent of staff was announced in January 2023, when Novoselsky took over from Tom Keiser, who had succeeded founder Ryan Holmes. (Holmes called it quits in 2019, after an alleged failed attempt to sell Hootsuite.)
Moving forward, the top item on Novoselsky’s to-do list will be integrating Talkwalker into Hootsuite, a task she is “very excited about.”
“The No. 1 focus is how (to do) this as seamlessly as possible for our customers so we don’t miss a beat and we continue to innovate because the industry and the market don’t stop,” he said. .
“He’s not waiting for us.”
This report was first published by The Canadian Press on April 8, 2024.
Tara Deschamps, Canadian Press
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