Gartner has given its Peer Insights homepage a new address and a fresh new look as it starts to integrate a peer reviews community, based on its mid-2021 acquisition of member knowledge community site Pulse Q&A.

The official narrative: “Gartner acquired Pulse to create an enhanced community experience and empower business and technology leaders to make peer-led decisions, beyond technology purchasing.

“Pulse brings complementary capabilities to an already vibrant review community of Peer Insights. Now you can connect with thousands of business and technology leaders through online discussions, instant polling and Q&A to share knowledge, get advice, and stay on top of current trends.”

Pulse was a 30,000+ member knowledge community that provided opportunities for “verified technology leaders to learn from each other” by asking questions and creating polls. The company boasted that it was “set to change how B2B decisions are made”. It said reference customers, including Salesforce, Microsoft, Okta and Dialpad, “already rely on Pulse to turbocharge their strategy, content and marketing teams on a daily basis”.

Clearly, the peer reviews business is big business

The $30m Pulse Q&A acquisition brings Gartner’s total investment in peer reviews to more than a quarter of a billion dollars. It also pushes total industry investment in the enterprise peer reviews market past $600m –underlining that it’s not just a fad.

So far, investors have plowed $247.6m into rival G2 – including $157m in Series D funding led by Permira and Salesforce Ventures last June. G2 and GPI are head-to-head in battling for enterprise mindshare – while G2 is in intense competition with Gartner Digital Markets, plus TrustRadius, for a share of wallet in the lucrative mid-market lead referral market.

Gartner and G2’s funding dwarfs venture funding for TrustRadius and PeerSpot, which rebranded from IT Central Station at the start of the year. So far, TrustRadius has received $25m, and PeerSpot $30m.

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