Social CRM: M&A deals indicate market consolidation. Who’s Next?

In the past few days, we have seen two major acquisitions in the Social CRM space. First, Attensity Group acquired Social Media Monitoring Leader Biz360 followed by acquisition of social monitoring startup Scout Labs by Lithium Technologies. This signals maturing of Social CRM market as marketers start spending IT and marketing budgets on tools and technology to engage customers on Social Media channels. This is just the start of consolidation in this space as “niche” players add more functionality to their product offering through M&A.

Real game changer will be acquisition by Enterprise Solutions major like Oracle or SAP of vendors offering Community Platforms, Social Media Monitoring and Social Network Analytics functionality to extend their Enterprise Solutions capability in this area.

As I predicted in my first post of this year published on January 2nd, 2010 is surely turning out to be the Year of Social CRM. What do you think? Who’s next in this M&A spree?