SiriusDecisions unveiled an update to its proprietary Demand Waterfall, a model designed to unify sales and marketing teams and to establish closed-loop processes. The research firm shared the new model at the SiriusDecisions Summit, held last week in Scottsdale, Ariz. The new model focuses on managing leads sourced across a variety of channels, including sales, marketing and teleprospecting. Click here to learn more about the new Waterfall.

Oracle has long been known for spending big money buying its way into hot new markets. This week's example: The software giant's announcement that it has purchased social marketing platform vendor Vitrue.

The Vitrue platform gives marketers a single set of tools to manage their presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube and other social media platforms. It includes an integrated set of content creation, publishing, moderation, management and reporting/analytics tools designed for social marketing campaigns.

Marketo this week launched Marketo Social Marketing, a suite of social marketing automation products including Marketo Social Boost, Marketo Social Promotions, and Social Data analysis. The suite is aimed at helping marketers to identify key influencers using social media services.

The company announced the launch this week at the Marketo User Summit in San Francisco. “We are in an incredible, worldwide business shift, with digital and social media at its core,” said Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez during the opening keynote. “The buyer is in control. Marketing and selling must now adapt.”

The announcement comes in the wake of Marketo's acquisition last month of social marketing startup Crowd Factory, which provided much of the underlying technology included in the Marketo Social Marketing suite.

SiriusDecisions yesterday unveiled an update to its proprietary Demand Waterfall, a model designed to unify sales and marketing teams and to establish closed-loop processes. The research firm shared the new model at the SiriusDecisions Summit, held this week in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The new model focuses on managing leads sourced across a variety of channels, including sales, marketing and teleprospecting.

“The waterfall represents a shared process between sales and marketing,” said Jay Gaines, Group Director at SiriusDecisions. “When organizations create demand, there are so many things that happen. It’s like an assembly line, and if someone in the middle of that assembly line isn’t doing what they should do, then all the effort at the other end is wasted because people aren’t getting the information they need to do their job effectively.”

As a new kid on the social media block, Pinterest has had its ups and downs lately. After a stretch of mind-boggling growth during 2011 and early 2012, things have cooled off a bit for the social photo-sharing site. Perhaps inevitably, some people are suggesting that Pinterest is a flash in the pan.

Here's the truth: There's a lot to like about Pinterest – certainly enough to guarantee it a long and prosperous life. There's also evidence that Pinterest is a useful marketing tool, both for B2C brands and for a small but growing number of B2B firms.