Yesterday after business hours, I got mail from Headshift, announcing that they joined forces with (i.e. they got acquired by) the Dachis Group of ex-Razorfish founder Jeff Dachis (not to be confused with Jeff Jarvis). This was thrilling news for me, as I just got to know Lee Bryant, one of the Headshift founders.

First, he impressed me with a short talk at Lift Conference in Geneve this year. There he laconically told the audience that the 20th century was wrong. Second, he landed another hit at our own next conference in May, this time speaking about user-driven companies. And third, Lee showed up at reboot11 in Copenhagen again (no video of his talk, but a short interview).

With Headshift joining Dachis Group, Lee and his team now want to engage their second stage rockets, as he puts it on the company blog.

“Leaving behind the niche world of enterprise 2.0, we are ready to work with businesses at a senior level to run change programmes aimed at bringing their processes, internal IT and communications into the Twenty-First Century. It has never been cheaper or easier to collaborate online. It has never been easier to harness people power to drive business performance. It has never been easier to engage with customers and business partners. Yet, as we know, most companies have come to accept an overly bureaucratic, process-heavy high-cost model of doing business as the norm. They need credible partners who can operate across technology, organisational design and business analysis to help meet this challenge, not just evangelists or technology vendors. That’s our role.”

Mercedes Bunz, who also appeared on stage at this year’s next conference, has a short Guardian piece that sums things up precisely:

“In the past the internet was driven by companies communicating with an abstract user. When social platforms for private communication evolved, most firms suddenly found themselves needing to catch up – that is, in the position of second-wave adopters. The forming of the Dachis group and the acquisition of Headshift can be read as a sign that the facebookification of business has begun.”