Muck Rack Acquires Keyhole to Add Social Listening to its PR Software

Muck Rack customers will gain access to deeper insights into how their brand is perceived on social media

Muck Rack, the company that enables organizations to build trust, tell their stories and demonstrate the unique value of earned media through its public relations (PR) and communications management software, announced that it has acquired Keyhole, the social listening and analytics platform that provides real-time insights on social media data. The purchase closed on August 31, 2024 and marks Muck Rack’s first acquisition.

Muck Rack will continue supporting the Keyhole product and will begin to integrate its tools into the Muck Rack platform immediately. PR and corporate communications teams can easily add social listening to their Muck Rack subscription, and soon will be able to access social listening insights directly within the Muck Rack platform, offering a comprehensive view of how their brand is perceived across social channels.

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The integration will enable customers to monitor direct and indirect brand mentions, hashtags, influencers and keywords across Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. Keyhole’s social media monitoring complements Muck Rack’s expansive global media monitoring, which includes more than 600,000 global news sources and more than 3.5 million articles daily, across online, television, radio, newsletters and print, all powered by AI technology.

“Social listening is a key part of the communications workflow, and as the consumption of news on social media continues to increase, PR professionals need to understand how social and news coverage work together in the broader media ecosystem,” said Gregory Galant, cofounder and CEO of Muck Rack. “By integrating Keyhole’s technology, we’ll be able to build social listening tools specifically for the PR and communications user, providing them with insights that can help them spot a potential crisis, inform earned media strategy and analyze key social media KPIs.”

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Together, the Muck Rack and Keyhole teams will build social listening features designed specifically for PR and communications. Muck Rack and Keyhole have been partners since 2023 and share similar values. Both companies were founded in 2009, pioneering social media data and insights, and both scaled successfully through bootstrapping.

“We couldn’t ask for a better partner than Muck Rack to scale our technology and bring it to the forefront of the PR community,” added Saif Ajani, cofounder of Keyhole. “Integrating our social listening and monitoring tools with Muck Rack’s earned media reporting will empower communicators to understand which conversations impact their reputation, enabling them to take timely and informed actions.”

The acquisition comes at a time of rapid development and financial success for Muck Rack. The company received its first-ever institutional capital investment of $180M in 2022 and remains founder-controlled, majority-founder owned and profitable.

Muck Rack’s software supports the entire PR workflow combining media database, pitching, monitoring and reporting to generate press coverage, protect brand reputation and boost PR performance, efficiency and collaboration. Built from the ground up and powered by the best data in PR, the platform leverages the latest in artificial intelligence and machine learning to monitor media outlets worldwide, helping communicators measure and report on the impact of their work on business outcomes.