Arik Hesseldahl

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After Buying Buddy Media, Salesforce Lays Off About 100

A day after disclosing that Buddy Media, its biggest acquisition yet, was losing money at a rate of more than $40 million a year, Salesforce.com has confirmed that it is cutting jobs in its Radian6 social media marketing unit.

Salesforce has fired “fewer than 100 people,” some at Radian6, some presumably at Buddy Media, and perhaps some elsewhere within the company, spokeswoman Jane Hynes told AllThingsD via email. Two units are being combined in order to create something that CEO Marc Benioff has called the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and so it’s reasonable to suspect that there might be some overlap and duplication in jobs. Hynes’ full statement is below:

“With the combination of Radian6 and Buddy Media, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the undisputed leader in social marketing and the only suite that allows brands to unify social listening, engagement, advertising and measurement. With the integration of Radian6 and Buddy Media, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud is re-balancing its resources to support its growth, including moving from a hub to a distributed model for certain customer-facing roles, consolidating marketing, and dramatically increasing investments in R&D. Fewer than 100 people globally have been impacted.”

Salesforce closed the $745 million deal on Buddy Media in August. It disclosed in regulatory filings on Monday that Buddy Media had at the time of its acquisition been burning through its cash at a rate north of $42 million a year. On the other hand, Radian6, which before Buddy Media had been Salesforce’s marquee acquisition, had the advantage of having been cash-flow positive at the time of its $325 million acquisition by Salesforce in March of 2011.

News of the firings was first reported by TechVibes. The Canadian tech news site said Radian6’s marketing and social community departments have been “decimated.”

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