Salesforce.com Unwraps Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud

Controversial Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff took the spotlight at this week’s Dreamforce New York conference to unveil the Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud, a set of cloud solutions designed to help customers monitor their social network presence and interact with customers in new ways.

Radian6 has been around since 2006, and was purchased by Salesforce in March 2011 as part of an effort to extend the Salesforce Service Cloud into the marketing sphere. In fact, Radian6 boasts more than 2,500 customers, including GEICO and Pizza Hut. What this new Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud really represents is Salesforce bringing its acquired IP fully into its ecosystem, with a slew of new enhancements to boot.

There are five key “pillars” to Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud’s value proposition, according to the press release:

“Social media is the single biggest change in marketing in the last decade. Social enterprises recognize that social media provides real-time opportunities to delight customers and prospects. The Radian6 Social Marketing Cloud will enable every company to be at the forefront of this exciting industry shift,” said Marcel LeBrun, SVP and GM for Salesforce Radian6, in a prepared statement.

Radian6 is generally available right this second, with deployments starting at $600 per month. The Social Hub component is penciled for release in early 2012 with prices starting at $1,200 per deployment per month. Radian6 Social Insights will be available before 2011 ends, but the API is available now. Finally, Siteforce can be purchased standalone or as part of a larger Salesforce.com installation, starting at $9,900 per year.

Salesforce is really putting its back behind the non-stop chatter about what it insists on calling the Social Enterprise. We’ll be watching closely for more updates.