Singapore’s Wildfire gets $2 million to influence social media conversations

Wildfire, a Singapore and China-based social media marketing company, has raised $2 million from Singapore’s Hera Capital, a private equity firm.

Founded in Singapore in 2009 but focusing largely on the Chinese market, Wildfire uses big data analytics to provide Fortune 500 companies with tools to gain insight on consumers, manage social media crises, shape the outcome of social media conversations, and convert online conversations into real purchases.

Besides a social media analytics tool, its other main offering is ActSocial, a soon-to-launch technology that harnesses voluntary, unpaid brand advocates to spread the word about a company or product through comments, photos, or reviews. Using patented algorithms, it channels a network of about 100,000 influencers to the right conversations. Wildfire’s products are available through monthly subscriptions.

Christoph Zrenner, co-founder of Wildfire, tells Tech in Asia via email:

We have around 50 servers across APAC today sifting through millions of ongoing public social media conversations, identifying stuff that’s relevant (real-time listening and machine learning classification), matching it up with the appropriate influencers, and recognizing their actual impact (similar to the Klout score) that they have as a result of the activation.

Wildfire was previously backed by Ideas Ventures and several angel investors in China and the Asia Pacific region. Other companies that offer influencer marketing and management services include Traackr, Gush Media, SCX Influencer Exchange, and Tribe Dynamics.

(Editing by Paul Bischoff)