By the end of July, Salesforce will have finalized the acquisition of Radian6 for approximately $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock, net of cash acquired. Radian6 monitors social media platforms for various customers, from Kodak, General Electrci to PepsiCo, Dell and many other alike, helping them establish relationship with customers via social media means.

With Radian6, salesforce.com is gaining the technology and market leader in social media monitoring,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “We see this as a huge opportunity. Not only will this acquisition accelerate our growth, it will extend the value of all of our offerings.”

Services offered by companies such as Radian6 are becoming mandatory if they wish to stay engage with their customers. More and more people are on online environments: Facebook has more than 500 million users, Twitter over 175 million users and LinkedIn has more than 100 million.

“Social media has made every business recognize the value of paying attention to the voice of the customer. Radian6’s technology is built for the new norm of customer engagement – real time, two way conversations that includes social channels,” said Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6. “Joining the salesforce.com team will allow Radian6 to grow faster to meet the demands of our rapidly expanding customer base.”

Going back to the financial matters of this acquisition, Salesforce’s revenues for 2012 are expected to rise to $50 million and by the end of July, when the acquisition will have been finalized, the deal is expected to increase revenue by $5 million.

Totally dedicated to the new trend of Cloud 2, Salesforce ended 2010 by acquiring Heroku for $212 million and continued with the acquisition of Dimdim and Manymoon. The acquisition of Dimdim enabled Salesforce to integrate real-time communication technology to its Chatter platform.