Hootsuite Acquires Talkwalker to Innovate at Intersection of Social and AI

After Hootsuite’s 2022 rebrand, the longstanding Vancouver social media firm found itself laying off staff in 2o23 (alongside, of course, a lot of other tech companies across the continent).

Since then, the storied pioneer launched an AI product and, most recently, announced an acquisition.

Hootsuite this week acquired Luxembourg’s Talkwalker, an AI-powered “social listening solution” that helps brands gain actionable insight into their social media audiences.

“We have had listening for years,” says Irina Novoselsky, chief executive of Hootsuite. “But it was industry standard, just like everyone else’s.”

And while that may have worked back then, “the industry is entering a new era of social media performance,” Novoselsky posits.

To achieve this next iteration, “we’re building a social media performance engine,” the CEO says.

The engine will function as “a feedback loop where AI takes consumer data and generates insights for actionable strategies and measurable impact,” according to Novoselsky.

We now live in an era where five billion individuals engage on social media for multiple hours daily and the vast majority of businesses today boast some sort of social presence. Social media is one of the only spaces where businesses can have a two-way dialogue—both listening and responding—to build and nurture real customer relationships, Hootsuite believes, which Talkwalker tech can help with.

“The combination of social listening’s best insights technology, Talkwalker, brought into Hootsuite, will leapfrog the industry into the future of social marketing,” Novoselsky stated.

Predictive analytics and social intelligence will aim to provide social media managers with forward-looking insights, while a deeper understanding of audience intent works to drive more qualified leads into sales funnels, according to the CEO.

For businesses on social, Hootsuite asserts that “listening and talking” translates into “insights and actions” that drive impact.

“This is where all of social media is headed in the future,” the company stated. “And we’re ready.”

Hootsuite was launched in 2008 as BrightKit.