Corporate social networking site Mzinga buys Prospero

Workplace social networking company Mzinga has raised a hefty $32.5 million, and used some of that money to purchase a similar company called Prospero Technologies. Until now, Mzinga has focused on in-company social networks, but the acquisition should allow it to create similar offerings on the customer side, which is Prospero’s specialty.

The big gain for Mzinga appears to be Prospero’s social media technology, which allows companies to interact with their customers through social networking, advertising, message boards, chats, reviews and blogs. Mzinga touts the social media platform’s versatility — it can be customized and integrated into your website through widgets, templates and API.

With the merger, Burlington, Mass.-based Mzinga has become a an even more formidable player in this field — it now has 150 employees and $30 million in annual revenue. It’s possible other enterprise software companies will consider consolidating to keep up.

Neither Mzinga nor Prospero was doing anything revolutionary (Mzinga offers a standard suite of blogs, wikis, idea-sharing applications and discussion forums), but both companies have attracted impressive customer bases. Most notably, Prospero’s clients before the merger included AOL, Disney, ESPN and the Washington Post.

The funding was led by W Capital Partners, which was joined by Bluecrest Capital Finance, GE Capital and Knowledge Industries.