salesforce.com

Salesforce has entered a definitive agreement to acquire ExactTarget, a digital marketing software firm, for $2.5 billion, marking the cloud software company's biggest acquisition to date. 

Under the terms of the deal, Salesforce will buy all the outstanding shares of ExactTarget for $33.75 per share in cash, marking a premium of more than 50 percent on the company's stock closing price on Monday.

"The CMO is expected to spend more on technology than the CIO by 2017," said Salesforce chairman and chief executive Marc Benioff in prepared remarks. "The addition of ExactTarget … Read more

Salesforce.com is turning things up a notch for its Marketing Cloud platform with a new product styled similarly to its other cloud-based products: Social.com.

Social.com stems from Salesforce's acquisition of Buddy Media and its subsidiary, the London-based Brighter Option.

Thus, the Marketing Cloud now boils down to three core areas: social media listening (Radian6), publishing content (Buddy Media), and branding (Social.com). The new service is described as a self-serve application for use by agencies, brands, developers, retailers and advertisers in developing, automating, and managing social ad campaigns.

Touting it as the first platform that connects … Read more

Cloud Sherpas, a startup that helps customers move to Google Apps and Salesforce.com, raised $40 million in second-round funding and acquired a rival, CloudTrigger.

The 350-employee company plans to use the money to fuel further acquisitions and to expand its existing business, a move that it expects will increase 2013 revenue to $100 million.

First-round investors Columbia Capital and Delta-V Capital invested in the second round as well, and new investors Greenspring Associates and Queensland Investment Corporation joined. Cloud Sherpas didn't disclose the company valuation. It's raised $80 million in total so far.

Acquisition is par for the course at Cloud Sherpas. … Read more

Aiming to be the first cloud computing company to hit a $4 billion annual run rate, Salesforce.com is on the right track as it beat Wall Street expectations for the third quarter.

The social enterprise giant reported a third quarter net loss of $220 million, or $1.55 per share (statement). Non-GAAP earnings were 33 cents a share on a revenue of $788 million, up 35 percent annually.

Wall Street was expecting Salesforce to report third-quarter earnings of 32 cents a share on revenue of $776.5 million.

But Salesforce seems interested in discussing future quarters, as CEO Marc … Read more

LinkedIn has accumulated more than 175 million "professionals" on its service, and after crunching billions of data points on its site came up with a list of the most sought-after employers in five countries and four job functions. Tech leads the parade, with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, salesforce.com and Expedia among the top companies on the list. 

Also in the top 100 were Zynga (42), Amazon (25), HP (37), Netflix (39), Groupon (41), Oracle (60) and IBM (74).

LinkedIn, which said it has two million companies in its database, also tracked top employers by geography. … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--When Salesforce.com CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff took the stage at the giant Moscone Center here today, 14,000 people, mostly customers, packed the auditorium to hear his two-hour keynote as he preached the social enterprise gospel and announced a bevy of new products and upgrades. He was speaking at the 13-year-old company's 10th Dreamforce conference, a four-day event that attracted an estimated 90,000 people.

Legendary rapper MC Hammer, who is also a tech angel investor, preceded Benioff on stage with a signature performance, surrounded by more than a dozen gyrating dancers. Benioff bounded on stage … Read more

For Salesforce.com co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff, business is more than creating disruptive technologies and changing business models. It's also about helping other people. He has been true to his word in donating $100 million to build a children's hospital in San Francisco, and the company's philanthropic arm has given more than $40 million in grants over the last 13 years.

But Benioff isn't all about helping other people. In a panel discussion prior to his interview at TechCrunch Disrupt with angel investor and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, the CEOs from Asana, Box … Read more

Salesforce.com has completed its $689 million acquisition of social media marketing platform Buddy Media, the company said today.

The acquisition, which was announced in June, was rooted in the social synergy between the two companies. The companies have said that the addition of Buddy Media's service will vastly improve Radian 6, a "social media listening platform."

"Salesforce.com now has the No. 1 players in social listening and marketing -- Radian6 and Buddy Media," Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement. "With the rapid growth in technology spending by [chief marketing … Read more

I have no idea if Buddy Media CEO Michael Lazerow is a nice man or not.

For all I know, he calls his employees donkeys and makes them pay for their own vacations.

However, unlike so many CEOs who seem to celebrate making huge amounts of money by accessing their inner fist-pumping Tiger Woods, Lazerow took a different -- and very moving -- course.

He made a video in which he describes, without speaking, what it feels like to die (which, he explains, he almost did).

He accesses some of life's sad absurdities and expresses them with grace.

He … Read more