Jive makes some impressive strides

It's been a busy, successful week for Jive Software. First, the social business software company acquired Filtrbox, a social media monitoring company. Financial details were not disclosed.

"Filtrbox monitors what people are saying about a company on Twitter, blogs, Facebook and elsewhere on the web and filters and organizes the conversations," said Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times. While Filtrbox and similar services help businesses listen, they do not help businesses do anything about what they hear--a problem that can be solved by integrating with Jive, Miller said.

Second, the company reported an 87 percent increase in 2009 revenue, from $16 million to $30 million; cash flow is now positive for the year. "Jive notched growth milestones all last year, adding employees, a Palo Alto office, $12 million in venture capital, two new versions of its flagship SBS business collaboration software," and the Filtrbox acquisition, said Mike Rogoway of The Oregonian, which has been following the Portland company as part of its "Silicon Forest 25" tech companies to watch in the Pacific Northwest.

Jive said it has also picked up some big customer names, including Booz Allen Hamilton, Bupa, EMC, Intercontinental Hotel Group, Kaiser Permanente, Life Technologies, Manheim, Musician's Friend, Qualcomm, SAP, Scheels Sports, Sling Media, Sprint, StrongMail, Swiss Re and United Business Media Limited. In fact, more than 25 percent of the Fortune 100 uses Jive, according to the company.

It probably didn't hurt that, in October, Gartner Inc. put Jive in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2009 report "Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace."

A lot of momentum releases from companies "try to put the golden paintbrush on their results and do what they can to make it look like the dog dying is a good thing," said Jive CEO David Hersh. "Well, I can't tell you how great it is to have a company like Jive at this point in time where I don't have to do that. 2009 rocked."

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