Lithium Technologies to Get Klout for $100m Plus

US-based social media solutions firm Lithium Technologies is to acquire social media analytics firm Klout, in a deal which is reported to be worth at least $100m.

San Francisco-based Klout measures the influence of individuals and the prevalence of topics around the web, using measurements of behavior, complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content. Since it was founded in 2008 by CEO Joe Fernandez and programmer Binh Tran, the firm has gathered more than 4,000 API partners - companies such as TweetUp, CoTweet, Live Intent, Hootsuite, BzzAgent, Trendrr and Viralheat - and indexed over 500 million public profiles.

According to online publication Recode, the deal will be funded by a mixture of cash and Lithium stock. The latter company already offers social customer relationship management (SCRM) solutions, and Lithium Insights analytics tools, and owns social media monitoring firms Social Dynamx and Scout Labs.

Web sites: www.lithium.com and www.klout.com .