Dive summary:

• Google is buying Wildfire for $250 million plus performance incentives, the company announced.
• Wildfire is the latest social-focused company to be purchased, with other recent acquisitions of Vitrue by Oracle and Buddy Media by Salesforce.
• The fact that it is Google doing the purchase is particularly interesting, and may be a play to gain access to Wildfire's Facebook user data.  That angle is covered well by ADWEEK.

From the article:

When Oracle bought the social marketing management company Vitrue, and Salesforce followed by purchasing Vitrue-rival Buddy Media a few weeks later, most observers considered the moves the beginning of a social media services acquisition spree. They weren’t wrong. Wildfire is the latest social marketing software firm to get snatched up—for a reported $250 million—but arguably the bigger news is who’s doing the acquiring: Google. The deal hasn’t closed yet, so it remains to be seen what will happen to Wildfire, and how much of the company Google actually ...