European social listening firm, Linkfluence, has announced some big news—it just raised $21 million and is planning to break into the U.S. market by purchasing Scoop.it, creators of content marketing software. The big news also includes another major move—Guillaume Decugis, the co-founder and CEO of Scoop.it is becoming the new CEO of Linkfluence.
Linkfluence’s latest series of funding is the seventh round for the company. The France-based firm received backing from late-stage venture capitalists, Ring Capital and Tikehau Capital. Two years ago, Linkfluence, raised nearly $14 million in a Series C round where it was backed by BNP Paribas among others.
The company’s acquisition of Scoop.it positions it for major entry into the United States market. Decugis, the joint company’s new CEO, said, “Thanks to the acquisition of Scoop.it, not only is Linkfluence’s R&D team growing by 50% but we’re also setting foot in the U.S. The fact that our last round of funding is the largest within the social listening sector in the last three years confirms our belief that our business model is scalable, that we’re on the right track for further growth.”
Scoop.it aims to help businesses and individuals research and publish great content. The San Francisco-based company helps professionals publish pages of curated content, distribute these pages to their social networks, and build up their personal brand. For businesses, Scoop.it provides services that facilitate curating, sharing, and reading content on private hubs; publishing curated content on websites, blogs, newsletters, and social media; and aggregating curated content across multiple WordPress blogs. Over four million professionals and marketers use Scoop.it’s services, including IBM, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Renault Nissan.
According to a company blog post, Linkfluence decided to scoop up Scoop.it primarily to reinforce its R&D and engineering teams and build up its presence in the U.S. Scoop.it appears to be a good fit for the company as it ‘uses a similar technology as Linkfluence to crawl, index and analyze content through artificial intelligence.’ After a “successful track record of working with global brands across Europe and Asia,” Linkfluence “decided that now is the right time to enter the U.S. market.”
Linkfluence’s clients include Danone, McDonald’s, Hennesy, Expedia, Ford, L’Oréal Paris, CocaCola, and many others.
