Oracle is extending its presence in the social marketing arena with the acquisition of Involver – its third purchase in nearly as many months.

The San Francisco-based start-up is a platform that allows developers to create marketing applications for social media sites such as Facebook. Companies can also use the tools to set up brand page profiles and connect with customers.

According to Involver, it is the industry's “first and only coding language” for social applications. 

“Companies are looking to harness the full potential of social media to increase brand loyalty, connect with potential customers and anticipate buyers' needs,” said Oracle in a statement. 

“The combination of Involver with Oracle is expected to create the most advanced and comprehensive cloud-based social platform across marketing, sales and service touchpoints. Involver's SML technology is expected to extend Oracle's social platform to help customers more easily and cost-effectively collaborate and build engaging applications and social experiences across their social campaigns and sites.”

No financial details of the deal were disclosed. 

Involver said in a blog post: “The combination of Involver with Oracle is expected to create the most advanced and comprehensive cloud-based social solution, across marketing, sales and service touch points. Our technology is expected to extend Oracle’s social platform to help customers more easily and cost-effectively collaborate and build engaging applications and social experiences across social networks and the Open Graph.”

The acquisition is the company’s third in the social media space in nearly as many months – most recently buying Collective Intellect for an undisclosed sum and Vitrue for $300m – and the latest event in the social CRM arms race between the big four.  

Analyst Angela Eager from TechMarketView warned that as the other major enterprise software player, SAP needs to stimulate and satisfy its taste buds before the best dishes disappear. 

She said: “As for Involver (founded in 2007), it brings social media development tools to the Oracle portfolio (including SDL - its social markup language), enabling marketing applications such as customised campaigns, to be rapidly developed and run on social media networks like Facebook. Oracle is in buying mode at the moment so more social acquisitions are a virtual certainty.

“Soon it will have to start explaining how it plans to bring these assets together and lay out a social strategy and its alignment with the rest of its vast application portfolio. One of the most interesting aspects of that will be its plans for making money from the social sector, something that has eluded vendors to date in this albeit emerging area.”