SurveyMonkey is being acquired by an investor group.  Dave Goldberg, who previously led Yahoo’s music business, will take over as CEO, but founders Ryan (current CEO) and Chris Finley will remain with the company according to the news. 

The company will be opening an office in Menlo Park, CA, where Goldberg is based.  From the current job openings, it looks like SurveyMonkey will be moving marketing and administrative functions to Menlo Park, while development and operations will remain in Portland, OR.

This acquisition is a tribute to the great work done by Ryan and Chris over the past 10 years in building the SurveyMonkey capabilities and brand. It’s also evidence of the growing importance of self-service tools for online surveys.  That’s why 5 Circles Research created SurveysAlaCarte^TM modular services and training.

It remains to be seen if the acquisition will mean increased attention on enhancing SurveyMonkey features and capabilities. Kara Swisher’s BoomTown column about the news shows that she thinks SurveyMonkey offers analytics.  I hope the comment just shows lack of understanding.  Low-end self-service tools across the board have limited is analytics and reporting.  The best that any of them offer is filtering and “cross-tabs”, but their cross tabulation capabilities are very limited.  In particular, if I want statistical significance testing I need to export the data and use other tools to do individual tests (SPSS or Excel), or run a full report using Wincross or some other product.  Either way, this process is time-consuming and expensive.  Looks like a good opportunity for SurveyMonkey or the competitors to differentiate, or for a third party to provide a decent, inexpensive, add-on.

In any case, congratulations to the SurveyMonkey founders!

Idiosyncratically,
Mike Pritchard