Yes, it’s true. 10e20 has merged with Search and Social (along with Brent Csutoras, Inc and SecondStep Search) to form BlueGlass. On some levels it still feels shocking to me, but on every level it just feels right.  Here’s the story behind the formation of BlueGlass.

Our 10e20 clients were asking us “What more can we do with you?” so many times that I would have to constantly refer them to others.  The Internet marketing landscape changes so quickly that it was impossible for a team of 12 to fulfill everything that our clients needed. My new BlueGlass partners are people that I have developed the ultimate respect for: I knew if I sent them a referral that I would never have to worry about the results that the client was going to get.  So over the last 5 years, we started working closer and closer together and saw so many synergies.

In the meantime, 10e20 was going through discussions with a few larger agencies that wanted to acquire us. None of those felt right.  But I knew something needed to be done to give our clients even better results and a deeper breadth of services. So it all started with a late night text to Dave Snyder which turned into a 3 hour call about how we could bring our companies together. He got it right away and so did his Search and Social partners. It worked out perfectly that I was scheduled to speak at a conference they were hosting in Tampa the next week.

Search and Social brings amazing SEO and linkbuilding capabilities to the table – some of the best I have ever seen.  The technology that they have developed (even beyond SecondStep Search, which will be out of beta in mid-August) as well as the reporting/auditing and competitive intelligence tools were beyond compare in my mind. They also had the ability to create amazing content. Content for search. Content for social media. To top it off, they had a tremendous network of solid relationships with bloggers.

The next step was getting Brent Csutoras and his team involved.  Most people have always thought that Brent was a solo operation but he has been slowly building a small team of some of the best viral marketers and tool developers in the space.  Once I told Brent the plan, it took him less than one minute to say “Wow, I am in.”

We all spent about 36 hours in a conference room over 2 days and were able to hammer out the company charter.  Less than a month later we formed BlueGlass Interactive, Inc. and started fully supporting each other on all of our different projects.  I had been involved in way less complicated deals that took over a year; the fact that we were able to bring everything together in under 30 days proved to me that we had all made the right decision.

So what does this all mean?

For our clients, we can now offer our clients better return on their investments, greater options and ultimately – the ability to have one company manage all of their Internet marketing needs under one roof.

For the community, it means that we can dedicate more resources to continue our mission of giving back in a meaningful way.  The BlueGlass blog will be chock full of content that will be helpful, new and interesting (oh yeah, be sure to subscribe now or follow us on Twitter for all of the updates).

We will also continue with our conference series, but we are going to be bringing it to different parts of the country and keeping the content and the speakers fresh and innovative.  Our inaugural conference will be on July 19th-20th in Los Angeles, CA and has an amazing lineup of topics and speakers.  Find out more about BlueGlass LA here.  We are dedicated to bringing in the best people, the best content and keeping the prices affordable.  The conferences for us aren’t about profit but rather connecting, sharing and learning.

So I invite you to take a tour of BlueGlass.  Learn more about our management team and the rest of the people behind the company.  Find out more about services and products.  We’re all very excited and look forward to big things ahead.

Also, here’s the official press release (which will break it down way better than I probably have above ;) ).

Thanks for all of your support and we look forward to continue to serve our clients and the internet marketing community!