The AppExchange Blog - March 2009

• Introducing Sara Bright, a redesigned AppExchange, and The Facebook Era!

  Clara Shih Mar 31, 2009

  I have some exciting news to share. After three years with the AppExchange team wearing many different hats from product marketing to product line management, I am transitioning to a new role at salesforce.com. Yesterday, I launched my new book, The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff (Prentice Hall), at Harvard Business School (read about it in the NY Times>>). The Facebook Era is about how social networks like Facebook and Twitter are changing the expectations of and possibilities for business, and what new tools are available to sales and marketers to reach customers more effectively. 
  

  Starting today, I will be focused 100% on our social networking alliances here at salesforce.com, such as what we have been doing with Facebook and Twitter.  As you might have guessed from my more recent blogs and our company announcements, making social media work for the enterprise continues to be an exciting area of innovation and investment for us. We appreciate the ideas and success stories many of you in the community have shared which are helping to shape the direction of these initiatives!
  

  The AppExchange, of course, continues to be an important part of our strategy and business. Thanks to your enthusiasm and usage, the AppExchange today is bigger and more successful than ever, connecting tens of thousands of customers with innovation from developers and ISV partners from around the world. Together, we have taken the AppExchange to a new place: delivering Checkout partner commerce in November 2008 and a newly redesigned AppExchange site just a few weeks ago which is built 100% natively on our platform using the new Force.com Sites technology. The new AppExchange incorporates ideas and feedback from hundreds of salesforce.com customers and partners over the last two years.
  

  Sara Bright, who is the lead product marketer on AppExchange and played a critical role in the site redesign, will be taking over this blog. In fact, in her first post she will walk through the specific features and architecture of the new site. Please join me in welcoming her officially to the AppExchange Blog!
  

  
  

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• Talk confirmed at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco, April 2, 2009 (2:40pm)

  Clara Shih Mar 9, 2009

  * Please note date change

  

  Track: Strategy & Business Models
  

  Location: 2022

  Preparing for A New Kind of Customer Relationship in the Facebook Era
  
  Spam from strangers is out, trusted product recommendations from friends are in. The 90s was about the World Wide Web of information and the power of linking information. Today, it’s about the World Wide Web of people and the power of the social graph. Online social networks are changing everything we thought we knew about sales, marketing, and product development—and empowering companies with new tools, insights, and ability to transform customers and employees into true partners.

  This session explores how real companies are successfully tapping the rich data and communication media on services like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace to bootstrap brand and product conversations, virally reach new audiences, and transform existing customers into a loyal sales force. Hear how new social networking concepts such as transitive trust, hypertargeted campaigns, persona profiles, and fringe-relationship “options” are rewriting the rules of sales and marketing, and what companies and developers must do to thrive and win in the Facebook Era.

  View session details and register for conference >

  Clara Shih

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• Takeaways from my panel at Social Media Influence 2009, London (March 3)

  Clara Shih Mar 4, 2009
  

  
  I was on a terrific panel with Bernhard Warner (Head of Editorial, Radar DDB), Guillaume du Gardier (New Media Executive, Ferrero), and Michelle Goodall (Econsultancy.com), moderated by Mike Parsons (Managing Director of Tribal DDB UK). We covered a lot of ground and had a healthy debate:
  

  • Michelle: Easy to get obsessed with metrics since everything is measurable online and become overwhelmed by the "tyranny of data"
    
  • Guillame: With an incredible 1.8 million fans of Ferrero Rocher on their Facebook Page coupled with an offline sales model dependent on repeat purchases, traditional ROI methods fail. Guillame has developed a "online engagement pyramid" that values activity from passive to active and attempts to correlate with in-store sales.
    
  • Bernhard: Today's debate is reminiscent of the early days of online ads when people complained about not being able to measure ROI. Ironically, we are getting more data and more accurate methods of calculating ROI over time, just that the old methods are outdated and this is so new that we as an industry haven't yet standardized on what the right metrics are.
    
  • Me: Measurement of Web 2.0 engagement isn't enough. The best ROI is when you can take action. Look at the Salesforce Ideas product, which powers Web 2.0 community sites such as MyStarbucksIdea, Dell Ideastorm, and the Obama administration's Change.gov site. It is a forum that not only allows community members to prioritize top ideas with voting and suggest new ideas, but also to close the loop by communicating when and how ideas have been implemented. As in Ferrero's case, it is difficult to bridge online engagement with offline sales, but Starbucks has done a fairly good job of this by incentivizing customers to use the Starbucks (debit) card and register it online.

  
  

  
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