Facebook Connects Social and Enterprise - another step in the right direction

Today Facebook announced a partnership with Salesforce.com to bring Facebook Connect to the enterprise using Force.com making it easier to build social friendly enterprise apps hosted upon Salesforce.com cloud! (see my wishlist of enterprise apps at the end of this blog post)

Facebook still operates like a startup and has gotten Salesforce to adopt Facebook Connect as a channel into the enterprise. Look at the launch of the partnership - facebook style - honest, humorous presentation by Dave Morin.




I've been super excited about Facebook Economy because I see it extending the web into a whole social platform where I can use technology more seamlessly intertwined with the "real me"

Facebook has been successful in building the platform and getting developer excitement going, theres no doubt about that one!

Many pundits argue (read Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher) that social is real and but the big question is whether it will be on facebook or on a bunch of technologies that all becomes social.



For social to become ubiquitous, it has to go past consumers (who don't make it super easy to monetize it) to the enterprise. For example Google is a consumer company but makes all its money from businesses.

I think enterprise + social has to be lot more than apps on linkedin.

We as consumers get used to status udpates, and comments from friends and sharing apps to expecting some of it in our business life but the real value comes when it improves efficiency for the business.

Linkedin is back with positive pr as a social platform because of its now open app platform. I think it has more to do with very low expectations we have on linkedin and I'll give lot of credit for opening the platform to Linkedin advisor Dave McClure aka Mr.Social Network.

Heres my dream and its all possible with Force.com on Facebook

• Communication and Collaboration: Why can't we break the barrier of friends circles inside companies that helps engine the corporate fiction in all our decisions to get real work done across organizations?
  
• Marketing and supply-chain improvements: Why can't business build relationship with customer and build social technologies that integrates their business processes.
• Product Development and inventory management: Why can't we as consumers interact with each other and our favorite brands to help them build just what we want at the right price when and where we need it.

If you are a facebook developer you have an advantage over the enterprise developer in that you know facebook platform and viral scaling of your app, now you just have to build it upon Force.com on Facebook!