My former colleagues at IPDI beat me to the story, but last night I received an email, courtesy of the excellent Non-Profit Salesforce.com Practioners Group, directing me to a post on Mashable! about a Salesforce App for Facebook called Faceforce.
Web-based CRM software provider Salesforce.com has launched a Facebook application for connecting data from the two services. Appropriately named Faceforce, the application allows you to see things like your contact record (which is kept in your Salesforce.com account) side-by-side with a user’s Facebook profile, assuming they are list as a friend. In theory, this enables a more personal relationship between sales people and their customers by letting them know more about each other.
Effectively (and legally!) utilizing Facebook data is considered the holy grail for many tech companies right now. Logically, a link up between Facebook and Salesforce should be profitable for both parties, strengthening relationships between contacts. A healthy dose of respect is required though. The strength of some Facebook friendships will be tested!
Political candidates who use both Salesforce and Facebook will now be able to justify those many hours of Facebook interaction. The friends political candidates amass on Facebook will take on new value as they can easily be attached to their Salesforce record, and hence their fundraising, activism, voting record, etc.
There are 2 key questions:
1. How tight will the integration be? For instance, will you be able to validate Salesforce data using Facebook data?
2. How will Facebook users react to their “friends” calling them with such detailed, personal infro on them? Will this prompt Facebook users to be more discriminating in their choice of friends? Will this in fact strengthen relationships on Facebook, although leave users with fewer friends?
There has already been some controversy surrounding this issue, prompting this response.
Rapleaf may have been able to douse the flames this time, with a little help from Judi Sohn, but it still raises uncomfortable questions for users of social networks and by extension Salesforce and it users.
Update: CRMfyi has a more detailed explanation of how the mashup works.
1 Response to “Salesforce + Facebook = Potentially Lethal!”