Buddy Media purchase Salesforce’s biggest buy

San Francisco cloudcomputing giant Salesforce.com Inc. has made its biggest purchase ever, agreeing to buy Buddy Media Inc. for about $745 million, it announced Monday.

The deal will allow Salesforce to add marketing software to promote its online customermanagement products on social sites, including Facebook and Twitter.

Without specifying a total value, Salesforce said the deal for closely held Buddy includes $467 million in cash, $184 million in common stock, and $38 million in options and restricted stock. The final deal value of about $745 million will also include costs for employee retention, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Software makers including Oracle Corp. and SAP AG are buying smaller social-media specialists to take advantage of more than 1 billion consumers who exchange views on products and services on online platforms. Oracle considered purchasing Buddy Media before opting to acquire its peer Vitrue, Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said last week.

“Social media has caused the biggest transformation in marketing since the ‘Mad Men’ era, causing chief marketing

officers to completely rethink their strategies,” said Marcel LeBrun, senior vice president of Salesforce Radian6’s social-media analysis platform.

After the completion of the deal, Salesforce said it expects fiscal 2013 revenue of $2.99 billion to $3.025 billion. Earnings per share will be $1.45 to $1.49, it said. The transaction probably won’t have “any material impact” on its results for the fiscal second quarter, it said.

The deal is expected to close in the fiscal third quarter ending Oct. 31, Salesforce said.