We publicly announced today that Headshift Ltd, my employer, has been acquired by the Dachis Group, which is funded by Austin Ventures in Texas. Jeff Dachis, who founded Razorfish, one of the first big web agencies, heads up the new group and sees this acquisition as the foundations of a global social business consultancy.
It's my personal hope that the new group will help us bring a much needed
element of credibility and professionalism to the social media
industry, one which has too often been characterised by self-proclaimed "social media gurus" trying to convince businesses that their success is dependent upon their
ability to build a facebook page that attracts thousands of fans.
I genuinely believe that social tools are going to transform society and business, but it probably has little, if any, to do with how many facebook friends or twitter followers one can acquire. A more professional approach to helping organisations understand and implement the necessary changes – something Headshift and our new friends in Texas have been doing already – can only speed up and enhance the impact of that transformation.
Dachis, CEO of the group, said in a press release:
"In this economic climate, the way we do business is changing.
Technological, social, and commercial advances have created a new
trajectory for the growth and development of large global businesses… These
trends represent a need for a shift toward distributed, collaborative, and
agile organizations that will derive concrete commercial benefit from the
evolving social fabric of the Internet."
"This is a
meaningful first step in creating our global footprint. I am delighted to
be able to work with Lee Bryant and his team. The combination of
Headshift's strategy and technology resources add directly to our already
strong and growing talent base."
I've been following the buzz about today's announcement using a Yahoo Pipe I threw together to monitor mentions on blogs and twitter. I've also been bookmarking articles and posts as I've come across them.
If you like what you read, you can find out more on our website. Oh, and we're hiring…
That’s a really nicely put statement Robin. Credibility comes not from jumping on the bandwagon, but basing decisions on the adoption of those social technologies which will derive the most benefit for both parties.
I think one of the biggest and most interesting shifts will be the way that businesses adapt and implement social technologies in their working practice (Google Wave replacing Basecamp or email for example). Remember what happened when people realised that they could replace the office round-robin (no pun intended!) memorandum with a group email…now it is second nature.
I look forward to seeing what you guys are up to.