Salesforce acquires productivity app Manymoon

Ronny Kerr · February 2, 2011 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/169a

Task-oriented productivity tool for businesses snapped up by the godfather of cloud and SaaS

Manymoon, a social productivity suite for businesses, announced Tuesday that it has been acquired by Salesforce. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
 
Designed to streamline business operations, Manymoon lets clients share events, documents, schedules and more with colleagues. No matter which plan one chooses, a Manymoon client can add unlimited users and projects, but the bare bones free version comes with just 25 MB of storage. Manymoon also offers three paid plans ($19, $29 or $49 per month, or cheaper by the year) that include 10 GB, 25 GB and 100 GB of storage space, respectively, along with increasing customizability and management options.
 
Since launching on three major platforms--the Google Apps Marketplace, LinkedIn and the Google Chrome Web Store--Manymoon says it has accumulated over 50,000 business clients.
 
Thankfully for current Manymoon users, the company doesn’t plan to change much under Salesforce’s ownership:
 
We’ll still be the Manymoon that helps you get work done. The Manymoon team will remain intact and will operate as a separate business within salesforce.com so we can continue our focus on building a great social app that makes our customers more productive and successful every day.

Salesforce will help Manymoon with “scalability, security, performance and support,” and Manymoon gets on the fast track to Salesforce’s client base.

The acquisition of Manymoon by a company as respected as Salesforce, universally accepted to be one of the forerunners of cloud computing, could spark wider industry adoption of productivity services for business that look to consumer-targeted social products for inspiration. One developer of a task-oriented productivity platform, Cohuman, just raised a new $600,000 round of funding last week. Like Manymoon, Cohuman has acquired many users through the Google Apps Marketplace, Cohuman CEO Matt Work tells me.

Salesforce has been no stranger to the startup world. In late December, the cloud company acquired Etacts, an email management platform for people who handle large volumes of email on a daily basis. Two weeks earlier, the company had paid $212 million in cash for Heroku, a cloud platform for writing Ruby-based applications. Both Heroku and Etacts were incubated by Y Combinator. Earlier in 2010, Salesforce had paid $142 million in cash for Jigsaw, a crowd-sourced business contacts database.

More recently, Salesforce contributed to Seesmic’s $4 million round announced yesterday.
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Salesforce

Startup/Business

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Salesforce.com is the worldwide leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) services. More companies trust their vital customer and sales data to salesforce.com than any other on-demand CRM company in the world.
Salesforce.com was founded in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, who pioneered the concept of delivering enterprise applications via a simple Web site. Salesforce.com is constantly building on that legacy by improving and expanding our award-winning suite of on-demand applications, our Force.com platform for extending Salesforce, and our one-of-a-kind AppExchange directory of on-demand applications.

Salesforce.com has received considerable recognition in the industry, including:
• Technology of the Year (InfoWorld, 2004, 2005, 2006)
• Editors' Choice Award (PC Magazine, 2002, 2003, 2004)
• Visionary Award (SDForum, 2004)
• Best of the Web (Forbes, 2003)
• CRM Excellence Award (Customer Inter@ction Solutions, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006)
• Top 100 Innovators Award (BusinessWeek, 2006)
• Innovation Award (AMR Research, 2005)
• CODIE Award for Best CRM (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006)

Cohuman

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on

Cohuman is the simplest most powerful way to keep your team in sync. Easily delegate, prioritize and track tasks with all your teams.

It is an intelligent workspace for coordinating people and managing projects. It promotes transparency and accountability in communications allowing teams to get things done more efficiently.

PERFECT INFORMATION 
Cohuman delivers immediate insight into the status of projects, coworkers and the tasks you need to focus on. 
1. We provide unprecedented visibility into a team's collective and individual responsibilities. 
2. Projects and people are presented with lists of tasks that are ranked in order of priority. We utilize metadata to dynamically rank a task's importance relative to the needs of the team.  

BENEFITS 
- Focus: Tasks are organized so people can focus on doing the most important things first. 
- Transparency: Team members have visibility into the shared actions and needs of the group. 
- Accountability: By compelling individual ownership, we reduce business ambiguity. 
- Accessibility: Files, conversations and deadlines are centralized, secure and always accessible. 
- Email Integration: We work seamlessly with email, so those who don't want to login to Cohuman don't need to.  

GOOGLE INTEGRATION
- Attach Google Docs to Cohuman tasks, and we'll handle the permissions
- Sync your tasks to your Google Calendar
- Invite your Google Contacts
- Login and Signup with your Google Account
- Find us in the Google Marketplace and Chrome Store 

 

The long version of our Story:
The challenge we all face in today’s multitasking world is that we are inundated with emails, tweets, social media statuses, collaboration tool notifications, IM’s, buzzes, waves and more. Submerged somewhere in this digital torrent are the tasks we need to act upon as well as the true status of the things we have shared with, or assigned to, others.  

The truth is, we feel productive when we merely click on what’s unread in our inbox (a textbook Pavlovian response). We feel a sense of accomplishment when we stay abreast of the chatter. All the energy and time we invest in doing these things is creating a false sense of “doing” and eating into the time we have to get stuff done. We’re on a diet of electronic junk food. The day goes by and despite having been connected and collaborative, we’ve accomplished less than we thought. What’s worse, we experience that nagging feeling that we’ve forgotten to do something.

Cohuman is an online application that cuts through this digital clutter and gives you the power to make, share and track tasks with anyone. 

We fundamentally believe that the only way to simplify our lives is to know what our priorities are and to be able to focus on what matters. Cohuman is a social network for all your work and personal tasks. When you share tasks with other people, Cohuman is aware of how all your tasks are related. That’s what Cohuman is – a Task Network. In the same way you keep track of your colleagues and friends via Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, we empower you to get status updates on all the tasks you’re connected to.

Based on an algorithm that takes into account the network value of a task, Cohuman is able to optimize your priorities and those of everyone in your network by assigning each task a score.

Cohuman lets you: 
1. See everything you need to do in one place 
2. Prioritize your day, your week, your life
3. Share tasks with others and follow their status 
4. Trust you are not forgetting to do anything

The market for Cohuman encompasses everyone who is tired of depending on email to coordinate their life or is simply struggling to manage their priorities.

 


Jigsaw

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on

Jigsaw is the industry leader in Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) and business contact information, uniquely leveraging content from its global B2B community. Jigsaw provides salespeople, marketers, and recruiters access to millions of business contacts and company profiles. Every contact is complete with a phone number (70%+ direct dial), position, email, and mailing address. Founded in 2004, Jigsaw is located in San Mateo, Calif. and funded by Austin Ventures, El Dorado Ventures, and Norwest Venture Partners.

Update: Jigsaw was acquired by Salesforce in 2010 for $175 million.

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