Content curation is, without question, a key component of any effective content marketing strategy. Thus the news of Livefyre, a suite of real time apps for publishers, joining forces with brand storytelling platform Storify, is a big deal.
Targeting brands and businesses interested in enterprise-level storytelling and content curation, this marriage of Storify and Livefyre aims to create a new solution in what they’re calling “the world’s leading social curation company.”
The acquisition (the first for Livefyre) makes sense when you consider the two companies’ specialties—and how they might be better together. Storify is a digital storytelling tool typically used by journalists (as well as businesses and other users) to amplify their voices and create meaningful narratives. Livefyre powers real-time conversation and social curation to help users not only build engaging experiences, but also their digital communities.
“By joining Livefyre, we’ll become part of a larger company with more resources, a strong technical infrastructure and experienced enterprise sales team,” according to Storify. “Storify will be able to give journalists, bloggers, publishers, brands and agencies even more of the features they’ve been asking for. Together with Livefyre’s StreamHub, we can offer a complete suite of products to help our users do much more. We believe our united products are a perfect match, offering the best social storytelling, curation and user engagement tools anywhere.”
Of course, most digital mergers (and mergers in general) aren’t just driven by the need to offer greater functionality—there’s typically a connection to increased revenue, too, and according to one hypothesis, that’s the case here. As PandoDaily’s Hamish McKenzie suggests, the Storify/Livefyre decision may have been partially motivated by native ads.
“Livefyre CEO Jordan Kretchmer says brands are already using Storify to create content, and that Livefyre can amplify those pieces of content by syndicating them among its media partners,” Hamish writes. “For instance, Chevy might create a Storify story about its new line of cars, bringing together tweets, YouTube videos, and Instagram photos supplemented with extra text and a headline. A publisher that users Livefyre might then accept money to publish that piece on their websites.”
We think this is a terrific move—and a smart one. And it’s also nice that the companies are keeping (at least for now) Storify’s free social storytelling product, which gives smaller users the opportunity to use the product (and get hooked). The new VIP product will be incorporated into Livefyre’s enterprise toolkit for those who want to make a bigger investment in their content marketing strategy.
We’ll keep an eye on how Storify and Livefyre continue to evolve—and if we end up testing out some of the new features, we’ll keep you in the know. In the meantime, we’d love to hear from you. Are you already a Livefyre or Storify user? If so does this make either platform (or both) more attractive to you? And doesn’t this merger just make perfect sense? We’d love to hear what you think.
Shelly Kramer is a Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked alongside some of the world’s largest brands to embrace disruption and spur innovation, understand and address the realities of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of digital transformation. She brings 20 years’ experience as a brand strategist to her work at Futurum, and has deep experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, GTM strategies, messaging develoment, and driving strategy and digital transformation for B2B brands across multiple verticals. Shelly’s coverage areas include Collaboration/CX/SaaS, platforms, ESG, and Cybersecurity, as well as topics and trends related to the Future of Work, the transformation of the workplace and how people and technology are driving that transformation. A transplanted New Yorker, she has learned to love life in the Midwest, and has firsthand experience that some of the most innovative minds and most successful companies in the world also happen to live in “flyover country.”