The Social Media Landscape

The art of conversation meets the science of conversion.

Today, just fourteen months after we demo'd CoTweet publicly for the first time, I'm thrilled to announce that CoTweet has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by ExactTarget, the leading provider of on-demand email and one-to-one marketing solutions. The combined companies will offer the first complete solution for businesses to manage all aspects of their online communication with customers and prospects, including email, mobile, and social media.

CoTweet will continue to operate in San Francisco and establish a new Social Media Lab for ExactTarget. The entire CoTweet team will become part of ExactTarget.

As the first Twitter application uniquely targeted to businesses, CoTweet attracted an impressive customer base, including large, established brands like Citi, Coca-Cola, Ford, McDonald's, Sprint, Starbucks, Target, and Whole Foods as well as aggressive, growing brands like Threadless, Naked Pizza and Get Satisfaction. From the beginning, we established very close working relationships with customers and have expanded and improved the product based on direct feedback from them. The level of engagement we have enjoyed with our customers has been remarkable and has allowed us to stay in lock step with enterprises, releasing new features that address their emergent requirements as they scale their social media engagement.

With today's news, our vision remains the same. We're committed to enabling enterprises of all sizes to engage in authentic, two-way relationships with customers, and will provide the tools so they can scale their social media operations. Combining with ExactTarget means that we can move even faster pushing the product forward and taking it to market.

Joining forces with ExactTarget makes perfect sense for CoTweet. ExactTarget has been helping companies communicate with customers for a decade. Their engagement model—serve the individual, honor their preferences and deliver relevant content—puts customers at the center and is just as applicable for social media as it is for email. ExactTarget is the leader in their space and is on a tear. In 2009 they booked $114 million in revenue and raised a whopping $145 million in venture capital. ExactTarget's CEO (and my new boss!) is and incredible leader with a top notch management team. And they've created a magnetic culture. It's hard to imagine a more attractive team to be joining.

There are so many people to thank at this milestone who have come alongside us on this journey. Specially I'd like to thank our investors: Baseline Ventures, Founders Fund, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Freestyle Capital and Maples Investments. It's amazing how much value the right investors can bring and we picked some great ones. I'd also like to thank our advisors: Josh Auerbach, Laura Fitton, Guy Kawasaki, John Loftus and Jerry Michalski. It's impossible to imagine our story without these folks who have contributed so much and I know will continue to support us moving forward. I'm honored to have incredible partners: Aaron Gotwalt, who dreamed up the CoTweet concept, has done the lionshare of development and whose belief that software is philosophy formed the foundation for our success; Kyle Sollenberger, whose design ability is second to none; and David Bill, probably the smartest and most seasoned CTO I've ever worked with. And lastly a huge thanks to our earliest employees: Michael Kovacs, Christian Westbrook and Susan Hobbs for believing in our vision and jumping on board.

Today a new chapter begins and we couldn't be more excited. You’ve probably noticed that we’ve changed our corporate color to reflect our new connection with ExactTarget. So both literally and figuratively, CoTweet's future is bright orange!

All the best,
Jesse Engle

BTW: Want to know even more? Check out this site with all the details.

Jesse is blogging on behalf of the Social Media Marketing Team at ExactTarget