A day for odd acquisitions. LinkedIn announced it is buying cross-channel identity platform Drawbridge, which provides both linkages and customer data. Drawbridge will become part of LinkedIn’s marketing solutions platform. Look at it this way: targeting based on LinkedIn’s deep profiles will now reach people across more channels.
Salesforce has introduced a “the first low-code blockchain platform for CRM”, a claim that’s narrow enough to be true. Open source Hyperledger Sawtooth technology lets Salesforce users can create blockchain objects the same way they’d create other custom objects and share them across networks in workflows and apps. Lots of practical potential. The platform will be generally available in 2020.
Selligent, a B2C marketing execution platform, doesn’t claim to have a CDP but does offer what they carefully call “CDP capabilities”. They seem to mean that they build multi-source customer profiles but use them within the Selligent platform. They’ve just added a customer information management tool that helps brands comply with privacy regulations. GDPR features are in place and CCPA is on the way.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.