Headshift Acquired By Dachis Group

The Dachis Group, headed by ex-Razorfish man Jeffery Dachis, has bought up the London based social media company Headshift. This deal has shaken the social computing world.

The Twitter comments were flurrying all day yesterday: @amayfield summed it up best:

"Headshift/Dachis massively significant. Not marketing, not just an agency takeover - a new sector shaping up: social business" @amayfield

Let's not underestimate the importance of this deal. This deal is saying that businesses are now going to have to have social computing as the major component of the way in which their business operates.

When the rest of the world has been faltering Headshift have had their best quarters at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009. But what is next? Co-founder Lee Bryant has posted on Headshift's blog:

"We are ready to move beyond the experimental phase to create real business transformation. Leaving behind the niche world of enterprise 2.0, we are ready to work with businesses at a senior level to run change programmes aimed at bringing their processes, internal IT and communications into the Twenty-First Century. It has never been cheaper or easier to collaborate online. It has never been easier to harness people power to drive business performance. It has never been easier to engage with customers and business partners. Yet, as we know, most companies have come to accept an overly bureaucratic, process-heavy high-cost model of doing business as the norm. They need credible partners who can operate across technology, organisational design and business analysis to help meet this challenge, not just evangelists or technology vendors. That's our role." Lee Bryant, Headshift Co-founder

Coincidently McKinsey Quarterly have published 'How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey Results'. In it they state:

"The heaviest users of Web 2.0 applications are also enjoying benefits such as increased knowledge sharing and more effective marketing. These benefits often have a measurable effect on the business." McKinsey Quarterly

McKinsey then go on to say:

"According to our research, the 20 percent of users reporting the greatest satisfaction received 80 percent of the benefits. Drilling a bit deeper, we found that this 20 percent included 68 percent of the companies reporting the highest adoption rates for a range of Web 2.0 tools, 58 percent of the companies where use by employees was most widespread, and 82 percent of the respondents who claimed the highest levels of satisfaction from Web 2.0 use at their companies." McKinsey Quarterly

Now that McKinsey taking this seriously then so will most big businesses.  In fact the report says that "despite the current recession, respondents overwhelmingly say that they will continue to invest in Web 2.0."

I would like to offer my congratulations to all the Headshifters I got to know during the 18 months of PwC and Headshift working together. I know that a lot of work would have gone into this and I know that there was a lot of hard work in the years running up to the deal. This is an exciting time for not only Headshift but for social computing and business as a whole. I'm looking forward to see what changes we will see in the next 18 months of this fast moving social world of business.

Blue Skies Ahead? - View from Headshift's office by Headshift's Lars Ploughman

Comments

[anon]

This may be significant in the UK, but when a player like Dell is offering social media advice to SMEs on Facebook that's probably more of an indicator that the ground is shifting: http://www.facebook.com/dellsocialmedia?v=app_6009294086