Social Business Leaps Forward with Dachis Group Acquistion of Headshift

Dachis Group announced this morning that it has acquired Headshift (see the press release). It would be difficult to overstate the importance of this action, as it instantly legitimizes social business as a management discipline on a global scale.

For those unfamiliar with one company or the other, Dachis Group is a small company with a big vision of what the term “Social Business” should mean. They are based in Austin, Texas and reasonably well-funded, by all accounts. Their team is diverse, experienced, and omnipresent at industry events.

Headshift, headquartered in London, is the larger and more developed organization of the two. They have been doing some very visible consulting work in Europe and Asia/Pacific, while trying to establish a U.S. office in New York. Headshift has been particularly adept at creating a vision for Social Business and executing on it at the same time.

Today’s announcement that the two companies are joining forces is huge for a number of reasons:

• It promises to define the relationship between Enterprise 2.0 (internal-facing), Social Media (customer-facing) and the use of social software to collaborate with business partners
• It brings together some of the brightest minds in all three of those areas
• Their potential community of existing clients could provide powerful adoption data and case studies that the market has demanded, but not received
• The combined company will have a strong global presence

There are likely more reasons why this merger is of the highest significance, but let it suffice to say that this is exactly the kind of stimulus needed to consolidate the disparate Enterprise 2.0 and Social Media categories into one vibrant and growing market. Social Business is now poised to fulfill its promise as a management discipline and supporting technology set.