Hootsuite, a social media management firm, agreed to acquire Talkwalker, an AI-powered social listening solutions provider, from Marlin Equity Partners, a private equity firm. Financial terms were not disclosed. "We have had listening for years. But it was industry standard, just like everyone else's. While that worked then, the industry is entering a new era of social media performance. To achieve this, we’re building a social media performance engine, a feedback loop where AI takes consumer data and generates insights for actionable strategies and measurable impact. The combination of social listening's best insights technology, Talkwalker, brought into Hootsuite, will leapfrog the industry into the future of social marketing,” Irina Novoselsky, Hootsuite CEO.