Gawker
-
mysteries
Facebook engineer stumped by Facebook-Salesforce.com news
The Barnumesque blather of Facebook's platform evangelists is matched only by the bombastic inclarity of Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. How fitting that the two companies came together earlier today to obfuscate their joint efforts. When Facebook agent obscurateur Dave Morin posted about the incident, his colleague, engineer Luke Shepard, bravely scratched his head in public, on Morin's Facebook profile.
2,046
5
By Owen ThomasComment by PrenticePhilemon: "Bombastic inclarity?" Really Owen? Just because you and some space-cadet facebook engineer didn't pick up on the obvious... 2 Responses | Other threads
-
meltdown
5 tech companies getting soaked by Wall Street's meltdown
If Silicon Valley is mentally disconnected from this week's Wall Street mess, it's because ad-supported companies dominate the Valley these days. High-net-worth investors aren't reeled in with cheap banners, so the demise of Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch hardly pinches budgets. Lehman spent just $501,900 on ads, both online and off, in the first half of 2008. Merrill Lynch, which has a much larger consumer business, still only spent $38 million on advertising last year. Still, some 150,000 people will lose their jobs in this week's fallout. That's a lot of tech infrastructure no one will want to pay for anymore. Lehman, for example, spent $309 million on IT last quarter alone. What's more, Lehman's investment banking connections run deep in the Valley's world of startups, VCs and big company buyers. Below, five tech companies that find themselves wishing they could unleash themselves from Wall Street's fate. More »
4,055
Comment by sample032: "New York's most successful tech company is financial information provider Bloomberg..." That's news to IBM. 1 Responses | Other threads
-
stocks
Mortgage meltdown boosts Salesforce.com
One of the oddest side effects of the credit crunch, which most recently brought about the nationalization of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Salesforce.com shares are soaring. Fannie and Freddie's fall hasn't boosted Salesforce's business. But Freddie Mac has been taken off the S&P 500 stock index, which made room for Salesforce.com. Index-tracking funds which are required to match its makeup have been buying Salesforce.com as a result.
538
By Owen ThomasComment by giddieup: please vw, dont become one of those pump and dump webpages. more » | Other threads
-
Yammer
Salesforce.com ready to buy Geni's corporate Twitter clone
Twitter was an offshoot of Odeo, an otherwise unpromising podcasting startup. Yammer, a Twitter clone launched at the TechCrunch50 conference, even copied the origin myth; it sprang from the loins of Geni, the $100 million genealogical website started by former PayPal executive David Sacks. Like Facebook, users sign up with their work email address as a way of verifying that they're employed by a company. Yammer's positioned as a tool for coworkers to keep track of each other's status, with features missing in Twitter such as threaded comments, tags, and messages longer than 140 characters. Even more interesting: In a panel following the demonstration of the site, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said he's interested in buying the whole thing. At last, something resembling an exit for Geni.
873
Comment by michaellamb: Let me make sure I have this all right. Arrington has a blog.Geni is a sponsor of the blog.Yammer is a... 2 Responses | Other threads
-
acquisitions
Salesforce.com buys InStranet to make call centers suck less
Salesforce.com spent $31.5 million on August 4 to acquire San Francisco-based call center software company InStranet. It's Salesforce.com's largest acquisition ever. Careful with the champagne, though. More »
757
Comment by ron_burgundy: Since when is Salesforce making anything suck less? more » | Other threads
-
11,043
Comment by deathbychichi: It is impossible to cancel Salesforce.com. We have been autorenewed every six months and have cancelled/recancelled the service five... more » | Other threads
-
stocks
Salesforce.com stock dip proves investors are skittish
For the second day in a row, Salesforce.com shares are down around $66, after well-known Citigroup analyst Brent Thill cut his rating to Hold from Buy. Thill wrote yesterday, "There could potentially be more weight to downside given cautious macro environment and poor investor sentiment." Translation: The stock will go down because investors think it will go down. That's the best explanation I've heard for how the market works lately. (Chart by Quote.com)
319
By Paul BoutinComment by Paul Boutin: Thanks, forfraksake, it was like 7:14 am when I wrote that. more » | Other threads
-
apple
10 iPhone apps that will drive you into Steve Jobs's clutches
Apple's new, faster 3G iPhones go on sale in the U.S. tomorrow, but a new store where Apple will sell third-party iPhone applications opened for business today. (Something to do with when the iPhone 3G went on sale in New Zealand. Those international date lines are so confusing!) The apps mostly range from free to costing $10, and you buy them on iTunes like you would an album or a TV show. Here are ten that will crush your last remaining resistance to Apple CEO Steve Jobs's demands. More » -
-
nerdfight
Salesforce.com rival lashes out at Benioff & Co.
When I met him at a book-signing party earlier this week, BrightIdea.com CEO Matt Greeley was all smiles. Now I know why: He'd just hit "Send" on a scathing missive denouncing Salesforce.com for trampling on his company's turf. (The territory in question, thoroughly obscure, involves something called "innovation management," or, as Greeley puts it, tracking ideas like FedEx packages.) Greeley's rant is worth studying for its overwrought language. He calls the enemy "Salesfarce," says it has "gotten fat and happy," and is a "rotted shell of a business" which will fall apart with a "nudge." The full email, sent by a BrightIdea employee who writes that he'd "like to pee in [Salesforce.com's] coffee pot, and I'm not speaking metaphorically": More »
1,134
By Owen ThomasComment by johnderby: oh my god...did the CEO of this company really send an all hands email where he referred to "Deferred Revenue"... more » | Other threads
-
nerdfight
Software maker's ad cusses at Salesforce.com
"@#$% Salesforce.com — it's easy!" reads a new ad from Serena Software. What does that mean, exactly? Serena isn't exactly a competitor to Salesforce.com; it makes enterprise software tools that help companies manage their enterprise software. Boring upon boring — until you realize who signed off on the ad. That would be René Bonvanie, left. He's now Serena's head of marketing, formerly a top executive at Salesforce.com. Is Bonvanie funding a dig at ex-boss Marc Benioff through his advertising budget? Bad marketing, excellent theater.
670
By Owen ThomasComment by Owen Thomas: @naisan: Well, that explanation makes as much sense as the ad itself. more » | Other threads
-
once you're lucky, twice you're good
R is for Rose, who made Digg his toy
Kevin Rose takes up 62 out of 294 pages in Sarah Lacy's Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, her new book about Web 2.0. That's less than I expected, since Rose was the coverboy for the BusinessWeek story, co-written by Lacy, which launched her book. From the look of the index, not much time is spent on the women Rose is said to have "plowed through", as his friend Alex Albrecht once put it: -
marc benioff
In Google, Salesforce.com's CEO finds a new partner to spin
When a partnership like Google and Salesforce.com's gets announced so publicly, it's a safe bet that the message is meant for investors and rivals, not customers. Look at the substance of their new partnership: Salesforce.com for Google Apps amounts to adding a tab to link the two Web-based services. Salesforce.com helps companies organize their customer leads and sales; Google Apps offers simplified and hence limited Web versions of familiar office-productivity apps like Microsoft Word and Excel. Add 2 + 2, and you get 4, not 5, as Google and Salesforce would have you believe. More » -
jackpot
Salesforce.com execs cashed out $678 million and you haven't
Within an hour and a half this afternoon, we received a pair of "tips" slamming insiders at Salesforce.com for "looting" the company by exercising stock options. They both link to Salesforce's insider-trading chart which shows that insiders have cashed in more than $678 million in stock. That's roughly 10 percent of the company's $7 billion market capitalization, but our tipsters didn't pause to do that math. One writes: More » -
sridhar vembu
Is Zoho's founder making Marc Benioff nervous?
When a magazine profile opens by informing me I've never heard of some guy, I usually assume it's for good reason, and stop reading there. Not so with Forbes writeup of Zoho's Sridhar Vembu, however. Vembu's company makes Zoho, a suite of online software. I had dismissed Zoho as yet another Web-based Microsoft Office clone. No one's going to pay for online word processing, when Word is cheap to begin with, and Google Docs is free. But Vembu has figured this much out. More »
2,063
By Owen ThomasComment by pepelicious: @Ted Dziuba: He's pretty good at the internets. Watch out. more » | Other threads
-
sarah lacy
Yahoo reporter knifes NetSuite CEO on air
In this Tech Ticker segment, correspondent Sarah Lacy laughs and smiles and pitches softball questions — "Salesforce.com is going to become Siebel, and you're going to become SAP?" (Siebel was swallowed up by Oracle, while SAP is Oracle's chief rival.) The flattery is effective: Lacy lets NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson talk, and talk, and talk. He spins a tale of how his company is poised for greatness; Salesforce.com, for obscurity. And then the financials pop up on screen: Salesforce.com is profitable, unlike NetSuite, and has nearly five times NetSuite's annual revenues. A ruthless evisceration. Nelson didn't even know he was being filleted. The full video: More »
4,661
By Owen ThomasComment by techiespec: if we look at the social graph who would've put these two together in this seemingly friendly setting more » | Other threads
-
rumormonger
Benioff pushing Salesforce on Oracle?
Salesforce.com representatives have quietly approached Oracle to see if it would buy the company for $75 a share, Tom Foremski reports. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison already owns a piece of Salesforce, but he's also an early investor in NetSuite, a rival service for online customer-relationship management. The offer, if true, would be a 47 percent premium over Salesforce.com's share price before this morning market opening. More »
910
Comment by Princedudi: This story should worry salesforce.com customers big time. We all know the culture at ORACLE, and we all know it... more » | Other threads
-
stocks
NetSuite IPO not good for a quick buck
Web software provider NetSuite's IPO, set for this Friday, should be one of the last of 2007. Despite losing $20.6 million on $76.8 million in revenues — wait, isn't Web software supposed to be more profitable than desktop software? — expectations are running high. Get-rich-quick artists may be disappointed. More »
782
Comment by Princedudi: Netsuite will have tough times justifying their price over the next 24 months simply because of the fierce competition by... more » | Other threads
-
conflicts of interest
The selling of NetSuite
In every startup's life, before it can go public, there's a ritual called the roadshow. NetSuite, an online-software company backed by Larry Ellison, may begin its run as soon as Thursday, having filed an updated prospectus with the SEC detailing its plans to issue shares to the public. The total: As much as $99 million from the sale of 6.2 million shares. One unlikely buyer has already put his money in: Salesforce.com board member Craig Ramsey, who bought $3.5 million from company CEO Zach Nelson and founder Evan Goldberg. Silicon Alley Insider reports that Ramsey's son works at NetSuite, but the purchase is still curious. Also playing the field: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who put money into Goldberg's NetSuite and Benioff's Salesforce.com.
587
By Owen ThomasComment by gettingback: This has nothing to do with IPO? or does it? Zach should be paying close attention to the NetSuite class... more » | Other threads
-
opensocial
Another minute, another Google Gang member
According to a source, blog-software company Six Apart has joined as another partner for Google's OpenSocial platform. For those of you keeping count at home, don't bother. The list is surely to grow as word gets out. Social network Friendster, for example, wasn't asked to join the Google Gang. The pioneering social network begged to be included after a story leaked on TechCrunch. Google's secrecy is making the whole "open" affair less than transparent, as different names leak to different reporters. Here's a list of media outlets and the OpenSocial partners they list. More »
684
Comment by timlonghurst: I've created the closest to a complete list of OpenSocial launch partners that I have seen anywhere. The... more » | Other threads
-
the chart
Bunch of losers and Google gang up on Facebook
Google couldn't get a piece of Facebook or its hot apps platform, so now it's building its own. Not that it would like people to call it Google's platform; it's trying to persuade people that this is an open platform. It's called OpenSocial, and it's supposed to force developers to reconsider writing apps solely in FBML, the Facebook platform's proprietary language. The idea is that Google will gather a gang of websites whose users combined, will offer an audience as large as Facebook's. It's a fine theory, but let's see the real numbers behind the Google Gang. More »
4,255
Comment by Figaro: Now that Myspace is in, even the idiotic fanboys like 500 guy have to admit that FB is in trouble. more » | Other threads
-
techcrunch40
Meanwhile, in the real world of business
The Web 2.0 startups featured at TechCrunch40 are adorable, really. But they can't compete with the draw of a real business with real, paying customers, Six Apart executive Michael Sippey points out: "Around the corner from tc40 there are 7000 people at salesforce.com's conference." Salesforce.com, unlike most of the startups on display at TechCrunch40, dares to charge for its Web-based software — a recipe for disaster, according to TechCrunch40 organizer Michael Arrington. Right. If you consider half a billion dollars in annual revenues to be a disaster, that is.
410
By Owen ThomasComment by Rock tha Hizzee: @fatbastard: I'll take that bet and even do you one better. Who wants to bet that five years from now... more » | Other threads
-
marc benioff
After selling off $8.9 million worth of shares this month, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff retains a mere $637 million worth of holdings in his company. Did we mention that he is much, much richer than you are? [Docu-Drama]
393
Comment by hmorton: The 150$K for the quad bipass surgey shouldn't be a problem then... more » | Other threads
-
quotable
Salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff, giddy with new-found profits, trashes Microsoft's competing offering, saying it "promises to do for on-demand [software] what Zune has done for media players." Ouch, that's low. [MarketWatch] -
confonz
Outcast's CEO Dinner Full of Hired Geeks
CONFONZ — To be perfectly honest, Terra, just underneath the Bay bridge, is becomign the go-to spot for any and all PR firms to hold events for their clients. Unfortunately, this means that your humble narrator, the Conference Fonzerelli, has had some of his weaker moments in front of the wait-staff therein. Fortunately, they're a tight lipped bunch, and they didn't out the Fonz for who he really is at last night's Outcast PR CEO dinner. After the jump, we detail the high ratio of Press-to-CEO's, and dish some dirt on the WSJ. More » -
features
The eruptors: 11 companies. 11 puff pieces.
Hey, nothing against the eleven corporate leaders profiled in Business 2.0 Magazine's latest feature, "The Disruptors." (Except you, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. Nobody likes you.) It's just that "glory stories" like this make us giggle, because by definition they have to play down the arguments against their subjects. And B2 added Wired-worthy hero shots like the one shown here. So here's a guide to the most egregious idolatry: More »
151
By Nick DouglasComment by commish: When Clearwire came to Eugene, OR, tons of peolple got on board. Being an liberal, anti-corporation town, everyone wanted... more » | Other threads
-
confabulous
Confabulous: Software salesfolk disturb dermabrasion doctors
A secret source at the OpSource Software as a Service Summit reports on a tiff between the skin peelers and software dealers. Straight from Napa, and drunk enough for Gawker Media, is our guest contributor. More »
- 1
1-27 of 27 for "Valleywag, Salesforce.com"
