Wildfire Interactive Inc, or Wildfire, was a

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to ...

software company based in

Redwood City Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in the Bay Area of Northern California, approximately south of San Francisco and northwest of San Jose. The city's population was 84,292 according to the 2020 census. The Port of Redwo ...

that developed a social marketing

application Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...

that enabled businesses to create, optimize and measure their presence on social networks such as

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

Pinterest Pinterest is an American social media service for publishing and discovery of information in the form of digital Bulletin board, pinboards. This includes recipes, home, style, motivation, and inspiration on the Internet using image sharing. Pint ...

and

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

. It was founded in 2008 by Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard.

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

acquired Wildfire in 2012 for a reported $450 million. In 2014, Wildfire announced it would be integrated into Google's general adtech platform

DoubleClick DoubleClick Inc. was an American advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google in March 2008. DoubleClick offered technology products and services that were sold primaril ...

Company history

Wildfire was founded by Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard who needed to develop their own social-marketing campaign for their adventure-travel company Access Trips. The tool was originally called Promotion Builder and focused on developing social media marketing campaigns including sweepstakes, user-generated contests, quizzes and coupons. In the summer of 2009, the expanded platform was officially launched. In 2008, Ransom and Chuard applied for the Facebook Fund and received a $250,000 grant. Wildfire generated $100,000 in revenue within the first month of public launch. They raised a

Series A round A series A is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. It can be followed by the word round, investment or financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in excha ...

of $4 million in May 2010 and a second round of funding of $10 million in 2012. Investors included

Summit Partners Summit Partners is an American investment firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm focuses on investing in technology, healthcare, life sciences and other growth industries. Background Summit Partners was founded in 1984 by E. Roe Stamps ...

, Facebook,

Accel Partners Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is a global venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional ope ...

and the Founder's Fund. From 2008–2012, Wildfire grew to include 400 employees. The company was named one of the top 10 places to work in the

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose. The Association of Bay Area Governments ...

in 2011 and 2012. Google purchased Wildfire in July 2012 for a reported $450 million. In 2014, Google announced that Wildfire's social analytics would be supported through integration into Google's general ad technology platform DoubleClick. Further investments into development would be limited and the application would not be adding features or signing new clients.

Overview

Wildfire allowed clients to engage and monetize customers through

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented Social networking service, social network. It was launched on May 5, 2003 by Reid Hoffman and Eric Ly. Since December 2016, LinkedIn has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. ...

and

Google+ Google+ (sometimes written as Google Plus, stylized as G+ or g+) was a Social networking service, social network owned and operated by Google until it ceased operations in 2019. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challe ...

. The app's components included Pages, Promotions, Ads, Messages, and Monitoring. Users could schedule content deployment to multiple properties with campaigns able to be customized depending on the size and the needs of the business.

References

{{reflist

External links

Impact Of Social Media Companies To Economy
Social media companies Google acquisitions 2012 mergers and acquisitions Defunct software companies of the United States