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!