The Social Operating System

Sponsored by Brian Morrissey • July 19, 2012 •

Social media has gone from a nice-to-have to a must-have for all sizes of corporations. That’s led to a spate of acquisitions in recent weeks, with Salesforce.com scooping up Buddy Media for $689 million and Oracle buying Vitrue for $300 million. As part of its series looking at social as an operating system, Digiday editor-in-chief Brian Morrissey sat down with Vitrue CEO Reggie Bradford to discuss what’s behind the big-enterprise technology player’s recent social moves and how the landscape is shifting.

“The reality is you have 900 million people on Facebook, another couple hundred million on Twitter, and you’ve got over a billion people using the social networks, not just one but multiple, to manage their time and their day, communicate with friends, family members and acquaintances,” he said. Corporations are recognizing that social has become part of how they do business.”

The challenge, of course, is social is many things to many people. It’s beyond just marketing, Bradford said, reaching into customer service, human resources and elsewhere. Within marketing, the biggest challenge remains the question of return on investment. “The answer is, not yet,” Bradford said. But social media isn’t going anywhere, a reality that’s hit the top reaches of corporations. “That question will be asked by the CFO and will need to be answered,” Bradford added.

See the full interview, which includes Bradford’s take on whether Facebook can crack big-brand budgets.