14 DAY TRIAL // The popular social media dashboard HootSuite announced the acquisition of TwapperKeeper, a Twitter archiving and analytics tool.
Soon after securing a new round of funding from established investors, HootSuite went on a shopping spree and bought TwapperKeeper, a very small but promising startup focused on storing, archiving, organizing and reporting on tweets based on hastags, mentions or user details.
After previously securing $1.95 million, HootSuite racked up another $3 million from from Blumberg Capital, Hearst Ventures, Geoff Entress and new investor Millennium Technology Ventures.
The TwapperKeeper acquisition can be justified by Twitter's announcement of a new free analytics tool, to be launched in the coming weeks.
Sure HootSuite provides free and premium statistics tools for their 2 million user base, but TwapperKeeper's features far exceed its capabilities and provide a tasty new thing for users to look for in the coming future.
TwapperKeeper is really attractive to a successful business like HootSuite, striving to keep users on its site and not going to the source service.
And judging by the preview Twitter made for its analytics tool, HootSuite's basic stats tools, combined with TwapperKeeper features seem to be a notch or two above what Twitter has to offer.
This is HootSuite's third acquistion, after previously buying SwiftApp (now HootSuite for Android) and Firefox addon TwitterBar (now HootBar).
The company also has plans for the rest for the remaining funding money, and that is to hire more top-rate talent and to ensure it remains on the rising trend it has been riding lately.
Compared to other social media dashboards, HootSuite is very respected in Twitter circles, being the first service Twitter tested its in-stream advertising system.
HootSuite estimates a $10 million cash flow by the end of the year, not bad for a company that aggregates social accounts built around a freemium model.