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Salesforce CEO Benioff: Future Software Will Look Like Facebook
Nerval's Lobster writes "Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is unapologetic about his love for Facebook. 'I think all software is going to look like Facebook,' he told media and analysts at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. 'Everyone is going to have to rewrite to have a feed-based platform.' If people can collaborate on tagging a photo, he added, they could easily do the same with a product or business problem. Even as Benioff touted his Facebook love, however, Salesforce is veering away from the Facebook model in one key way: whereas Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg felt his company focused too much on HTML5 for its mobile apps, choosing to focus instead on native-app development, Salesforce is embracing HTML5 for its Salesforce Touch app, which delivers Salesforce data such as Chatter feeds and contacts to a variety of mobile devices."
I look forward to a feed based version of Photoshop or any CAD program...
and stop this nonsense!
If there's anything I need less of in my life it's "feeds".
I use software to create art. There is nothing more wonderful than art by committee.
And look at how well that has gone for us...
Remember, ten years ago when the iPod was the hot thing, everything started looking like iTunes and now all software looks like iTunes. It's going to be just like that, right?
Salesforce is embracing HTML5 for its Salesforce Touch app,
"Everything is going to look like Facebook in the future!" ... using the language that Facebook just dropped in its mobile app.
Please F/OSS folks, don't listen to this guy!
I'm beginning to think that if I want a stand alone app, F/OSS is probably going to be the only way to go in the near future - unless you (F/oSS community) decide to continually ape the mainstream.
Big chance here to differentiate yourselves .....
Just say'in.
but, as my grandfather used to say - nobody gives a rats ass what you THINK. tell us what you KNOW.
This is a person who goes to meetings instead of doing productive work. Software used by people who do actual work will not be redesigned this way.
which looks anything like Facebook, will be the subject of intense litigation.
Pretty much any future software will be.
main () { printf("Hello world!"); } © PatentTrollsRUs
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The Facebook "metaphor" barely works for Facebook, why spread the disease?
Most just spent hundreds of thousands migrating to IE 8 and these intranet apps wont run on anything else. If salesforce.com makes html 5 sites their customers simply will ignore them like they are shunning Google Docs now for not supporting IE 6 and 7.
Maybe in 10 years after 2020 will these users leave IE 8. It does not make economic sense to do so especially after they blew all this cash just for IE 8 in 2012! ... oh and people are not getting paid to hang out in social networks. They are getting paid to get work done. Traditional apps like photoshop, autocad, quickbooks, excel, outlook, etc enable people to do such that. Uh, work!
That is just common sense
http://saveie6.com/
He's confusing Facebook The Application with Facebook the communication / social network. Facebook has never been a success because of its software. The software has essentially always worked just well enough to facilitate what people came there for, which is to communicate in a feed based manner with friends and family. I have never, ever heard anyone (besides this guy) go on about how wonderful the Facebook software is. In fact it is always the opposite.
My grandparents are on Facebook for one reason and one reason only. They get to read messages and view pictures about family members they care about - information they otherwise could not get through any other channel. I'm sure that a very significant number of people are on FB for the exact same reason. That has nothing to do with software, but content.
Again, the Facebook software facilities the social network, not the other way around.
Better known as 318230.
The FB concept might be OK for leisure use by people who use it simply for entertainment. But when you pay for a software package you do so in the expectation that the commercial product will be an investment, that will reward you or save more than it cost by letting you get stuff done quickly and reliably.
So far as collaboration goes - forget it. I don't want to have to fork-out for a piece of software and then be dependent on other people "collaborating" in order to achieve my goals. When I pay for software I want it to do all the stuff I need doing, not some group of strangers who may, or may not, have a clue.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
God forbid considering what a backwards eyesore FB's interface is.
How unusual...a person views the world through a filter based on their personality and preferences and doesn't realize their own biases and that other people might think/work differently...
In other news, for some incomprehensible reason, most non-technical people don't like the CLI. I don't understand why they would hamper themselves by using a lesser interface.
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
If all software is going to look like Facebook we can look forward to ever application having a confusing interface that contradicts itself on every page in its style and functionality. It will also shuffle where to find things every month, so things are never in the same place twice.
Users will also always have to think twice before doing anything, least they accidentally sign up to some spam feed, or being whisked away to some ad and javascript infested website, or inadvertently share all their work with the entire internet. Of course, that's what the software would prefer you to do, so it won't make it easy to avoid.
Can't wait.
Every few years, someone pops up and says "Everything is going in X direction, this is what we'll be using/how software will look". Generally speaking they're usually dead wrong. Most famously, Andrew Tanenbaum once argued in 1992 that "... 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5".
1997 came and went, everyone was running non-free Windows 95 on their 200MHz PentiumMMX beige boxes.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
should either quit smoking that stuff, or find better stuff to smoke.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
I think all real software developers and users just got a goo laugh. This is probably the same person who thinks there is such a thing as a 'post-PC-era' coming.
His idea might be great when you're talking about people collaborating on a list of details. Everyone can pitch in what they have, and then everyone else comments on it.
Not all software rewards this approach. I'd hate the idea of floating a document in progress on Facebook, and having people post suggestions without having any idea of what the whole finished product should look like.
As as practical uses, Facebook is a lot like Slashdot (but not as cool). I come here not for the chatter, off-topic posts, trolls (well maybe), but for the 10% of the community who know a lot and can think and weigh in on relevant topics.
If you can imagine a version of Facebook for a technical topic, it would be basically the same thing, except that those 10% would be doing the work while the rest goof off.
Oh god, I hope not.
If the software Marc Benioff is referring to are applications meant for business communication and collaboration -- with his knowledge, experience and success -- he has a decent probability (imho) of being right.
However, the Internet isn't ubiquitous and doesn't have the following properties:
1. The Network is reliable.
2. Latency is zero.
3. Bandwidth is infinite.
4. The Network is secure.
5. The Network is homogeneous
Until it does, instead of trying to turn my computer into a dumb terminal, the applications I use not requiring bandwidth are better being used offline at my convenience on my own equipment.
Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why
I work for a company that has a love affair with social media and a bit of a love affair with SalesForce... kinda. I've seen their software and we've tried hard to even use some. When Chatter was brought to our company, it was well received. Once people started trying to use it, it became extremely obvious that it's a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. The only problem that it could possibly solve is "How to we get our employees to act more like they're using Facebook?" Sorry guys, we're not (all) children and we want Big Boy Tools to get our jobs done.
Do you really want your employees to feel comfortable posting their photos and comments from drunken nights of debauchery on company systems? Seems like a bad line to start trying to make fuzzy.
Mr. Beniot 010010 opines in today's edition of the "Silicon Age" that "in the future all software will look like Blertify."
Repeat as needed.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Welcome to the 20th century,
what do you think notification e-mails have been playing as a role in Enterprise communication? It's the feed, it has been since the 1990s.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
I would argue that native applications are the future, as the raw processing power is accessible on local computer, while some of the data is stored to personal data servers (like using OwnCloud software or Smartphone or raspery Pi kind small computers (Plug-PC)) what is then shared to others trough links and access codes.
The user interfaces are being to changed more to Unix style where user gives direct commands for the data to poke it around. Like instead Facebook style of opening and sending data or searching, users just drag'n'drop files over contact lists or type "send grouppicture to john@example.com" from universal command line what are in every window and taking commands from those functions. Then every picture, video, document etc are presented without windows and tools. Instead people just click anywhere and start typing, selects text and makes modification to text trough small pop-up (like now office etc).
And when someone calls, you get nice simple notification popping up with that person contact information and you simply click or say voice command for that "open video call" or "open voice only" without that taking focus from your other task.
Still, every creative tools like image manipulation or video editor software have more tools around the images and videos but without windows. And tools can be hided when out of focus.
All devices around the local network are connected if knowing correct password. Like having TV and tablet so you can just "push" files to them and continue working, without any "cloud service" being on the way. If wanted to keep presentation, just direction slideshow file to TV and thats it.
Having a party or photoshootout, it is just that camera can be set easily to send all photos to local network server where they are accessible from other computers with authorization.
Everything using open API's and open source and old fashion Unix technology. Nothing fancy HTML5/6 or anything with web browser.
In contrary, web sites are hided and all images, videos and text are pure files without any special layouts and they can be downloaded/pushed/directed with tools like wget and get them to be presented as any user wants. Like if user is blind, text only without ads and so on. If video is just interesting, you just command computer to show the video and it is presented.
The web browser is the one what is going to vanish and web designers are going to search new work.
Oh, and pure text files are coming back more and only very specific formatting is stored to metadata outside of the actual data.
Instead sending 1Mb document, you only send 7kb first and then if wanted the other 10Kb for formatting (bold, underline etc).
I haven't believed that line since Walter Cronkite said robots would be doing all our work before the 21st century.
I look forward to the free version of salesforce then. Last time we looked into it they were charging over $2million/year for a contract.
Also, in the future all restaurants are Taco Bell. And all ice cream is Dippin' Dots.
I'm loathe to admit that a trend-surfing PHB is right about something, but in this case, he's actually dead on the money.
You guys are thinking about software applications like eclipse, photoshop, or excel/word, etc.
That's probably not what he's talking about. What he's talking about is software you use to run your business.
I build this kind of thing for a living at a truly gigantic company. "Ticket systems" they used to call it back in the 90's but these days you'll hear "workflow management", etc. I'm continually amazed at how well facebook does a kind of massive collaboration platform that literally millions of people use all day every day, that is so simple to use, that there are literally no instructions and nearly everyone in the world who wants to, can use it just fine.
Sure they're "collaborating" by posting captioned cat pictures, arguing with their long lost high school buddies about politics, and playing dumbassed flash games with social hooks, instead of troubleshooting routers and customer equipment, but the principle is damn near IDENTICAL.
I'm amazed by this because I've been building this stuff for like 15 years and every off the shelf product gets it wrong. Nearly all of the industry standards get it wrong. Every purpose-built in-house project gets it wrong. But these spiky hair'd startup kids got it right without even knowing what they were building.
Kind of amazing really. Those of us in this field DO have a lot to learn from facebook.
now I guess I've gotta turn in my "krusty old guy" card or get back to telling 'em to get off my lawn
don't hate the player, lost the game
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
He's right. The issue is not what Facebook shows. It's how the pages are put together. It takes work by a lot of servers to assemble each page. The user-facing servers send out queries to servers which check the feeds of everything being followed - friends, events, calendars, messages, applications - and create a page to display. This page is updated automatically if you keep it open. You can look at any of these items in more detail, and go back into their past if desired.
That's what managers do - follow many changing items superficially and look at some of them in detail. A management version might have feeds for shipments which missed their ship date, incoming orders, customer complaints, personnel absences, due dates for major supplier shipments, and other items of interest. Different users would be watching different things, some info would be available only to some users, and users would set what they wanted to see. If you've ever used a Bloomberg terminal, it's a lot like that, but with worse graphics.
Facebook has a reasonable platform for that sort of thing. The back end is databases and message passing. The business logic and formatting is mostly in PHP (for which Facebook has a hard-code compiler, so it doesn't take forever). Facebook also has decent solutions to the "tell me if it changed without polling too often" problem.
Several of my companies "suppliers" use Salesforce.com's tools to manage their customer base, that means me. As a result I've been a user of Salesforce's "solution" for some time. The result is some really, special hate for Salesforce.
Aside from the usual complaints that their software is super-buggy, requiring almost monthly tickets with my vendor to have someone on their side open a ticket with Salesforce to fix some relatively minor data corruption issue that should have never of happened, I can also see where he is going and how stupid everyone at salesforce.com must be to go along. In the latest iteration rolled out at one of my vendors I can "friend" people in my vendor portal, and get a news feed from my friends. Of course, my vendor won't let me see what their other customers are doing, so the grand total of my "friend" list is myself, my boss (so he can place orders if I'm hit by a bus), and my vendor sales rep. Never mind that under normal circumstances there is zero activity for my boss or my sales rep, but even though they have disabled me seeing other customers the software repeatedly asks me if I want to "find more friends", or share what I just did with them.
I'm leaving out what my vendor actually does, as it's esoteric, and now going to use a made up example.
Me: Please ship me 1 case of packing tape. Web site: Did you know your friends might be interested in Packing Tape, would you like to share?
I can see some niche markets where they might have a play, but honestly for most people using their software their direction makes absolutely no sense. More importantly, spending all the time on these "social" features when the base application is buggy and slow and never works right makes absolutely no sense to me. Their various iterations have been so bad my boss has actually agreed to add a "no salesforce.com portal" to the checklist for new vendors, and it's one of the major reasons we're thinking about moving away from one of our current vendors.
Yeah, yeah yeah, we've heard this a million times before. I seem to recall an invention that was going to change the world that "cities were going to be built around this", and it was going to be so revolutionary that we'd forever alter the way we interact with others.
So did paperback books, the sony walkman, etc., just because something's cool now doesn't mean it'll be cool in 10 years. I mean, do you see anyone wearing leg warmers anymore?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I wonder if the future interpretors for HTML and Javascript will be written in HTML and Javascript, oh wait...
The Internet is a great, recent, example. Nobody predicted it, not even in Sci-Fi. The idea of a truly global, integrated, universal network was just not something people thought of. Hell even when it was first developed as ARPAnet it was just envisioned for government and research, they didn't say "We are going to connect all the computers in the world!" Their goals were much smaller, it just ended up evolving in to that.
Incremental changes we can sometimes predict. The real revolutionary ones we almost never can.
I mean, there's only so much douchebaggery to go around.
In the Future, *all* restaurants are Taco Bell! ...finally, I got something out of seeing that crappy movie :)
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
The Internet is a great, recent, example. Nobody predicted it, not even in Sci-Fi. The idea of a truly global, integrated, universal network was just not something people thought of. Hell even when it was first developed as ARPAnet it was just envisioned for government and research, they didn't say "We are going to connect all the computers in the world!" Their goals were much smaller, it just ended up evolving in to that.
Incremental changes we can sometimes predict. The real revolutionary ones we almost never can.
and refrigerators... don't forget about the refrigerators...
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Facebook is only good until the next big thing happens...
Then Windows 8 is going to look even more stupid.
Is it Fridge Day already?
While technically interesting, Internet itself is too trivial for science fiction to think about -- since at least 40's any description of the "future" involved ability to communicate over great distances instantly.
It's only because mankind DID VIRTUALLY NOTHING ELSE IN ANY WAY SPECTACULAR since 1970, Internet became such a prominent fixture in our culture.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yes, obviously an idiotic statement. But it will sell well. I can't say how many times I heard from clients variations on "Can you make my [software I have to use for work but don't want to learn] work like [software or web site I like]?"
This includes:
"Can you make the inventory management system work like Outlook?"
"Can you make the system we create marketing materials in work like Amazon?"
"Can you make our senor network reporting work like Facebook?"
But if you're the company that actually gives into these morons then you have even bigger problems.
That's what managers do - follow many changing items superficially and look at some of them in detail. A management version might have feeds for shipments which missed their ship date, incoming orders, customer complaints, personnel absences, due dates for major supplier shipments, and other items of interest. Different users would be watching different things, some info would be available only to some users, and users would set what they wanted to see. If you've ever used a Bloomberg terminal, it's a lot like that, but with worse graphics.
Facebook has a reasonable platform for that sort of thing.
Any decent CRM or ERP system has dashboards that are more efficient for this sort of thing - hell, even JIRA has them, and you can create your own or even share it. This sort of behavior is not new - back in 2005, I worked at a major BI company and many managers even had their own mini datamart for not only current status reports/dashboards but (with their datamarts) trending within those data feeds.
There is no reason the "Facebook interface" is any better than what's out there in many enterprise appications (some of which are open-source). Google "JIRA dashboard" or "CRM dashboard" for a slew of examples which are better than Facebook for managers.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
More idiotic forms of "collaboration". As if business isn't paralyzed enough already with meetings, committees, focus groups...you name it. It's a miracle that anything gets done.
We at Salesforce have bet the rance on facebook. Please PLEASE buy our stuff.
Which version of Facebook is he talking about? Facebook has changed the way it looks so many times, even Facebook doesn't look like Facebook any more! On the other hand, Facebook has changed its look so many times, any look will be like at least one version of Facebook!
All you need to do is add digital...then every office conversation will have dERP in it.
Chairman: Mr. Doe, can you give us quarterly projections for revenue in 2013 after compensating for inflation?
John Doe: Probably down a bit
Commenter1: lol, n00b
Commenter2: it would be better if OBAMA wasn't here
Commenter3: If Mittens was here we wouldn't have jobs IDIOT
member of public: dats why u need 2 vote 4 Ron Paul. man im so high right now.
Anonymous stock holder: fuck u guys
Great ! Now all software will be difficult to use and understand just like Facebook's Timeline !
he is a pointless blip on the history of tech
How quickly people forget...