Facebook and Salesforce.com Release New Tools for Building Force.com Apps with Facebook Data

November 3rd, 2008

The Facebook Platform team and Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform team have teamed up to make it easier for Salesforce.com application developers to access and use social data from Facebook. The new package, called “Force.com for Facebook,” launches today at developer.force.com.

While business applications have not gained significant adoption on Facebook.com itself, Facebook hopes to enable new types of social enterprise apps that run on Force.com by allowing Salesforce apps to more powerfully connect to the rich data that lives on Facebook. Force.com apps will connect to the Facebook Platform through Facebook Connect, Facebook’s major initiative to extend the Facebook Platform throughout the web.

“Facebook users are always eager to try new applications that can improve their ability to connect and share in a trusted environment.” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO. “Our work with salesforce.com will give developers the tools to create and deliver a new class of business applications for Facebook’s 120 million active users.”

Salesforce.com’s large developer community will be able to build apps that connect to the Facebook APIs and also directly to Force.com’s Sites, database, integration, Apex, and Visualforce, all running on Force.com infrastructure. Force.com for Facebook includes full support for FQL and API calls, FBML, xFBML, profiles, and custom components for Facebook Pages.

Today’s release is not the first time Salesforce and Facebook have worked together to connect their platforms. Last October, Salesforce.com’s Clara Shih and Facebook’s Todd Perry collaborated to create the Faceforce application for Salesforce. The two teams have continued work over the last year, culminating in the release of Force.com for Facebook today. Further information is available in the Salesforce developer docs here.

The official announcement video:

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Posted by Justin Smith

Filed in Applications, Business, Connect, Development, Facebook

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3 Responses to “Facebook and Salesforce.com Release New Tools for Building Force.com Apps with Facebook Data”

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Nov 19, 2008 Says:
November 19th, 2008 at 5:39 am
[...] It’s key to watch how businesses will be impacted by social networks, and this announcement, to enable games and productivity to work together. Expect to see a new category of applications to be built that meet both these [...]
Yks blog » Blog Archive » Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: Nov 19, 2008 Says:
November 27th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
[...] It’s key to watch how businesses will be impacted by social networks, and this announcement, to enable games and productivity to work together. Expect to see a new category of applications to be built that meet both these [...]
Appirio’s ReferMyFriends Connects Salesforce to Facebook to Help Companies Generate More Referrals Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 7:05 am
[...] ReferMyFriends is one of the first applications built on new tools created through Salesforce’s strategic partnership with Facebook announced last November. The two companies have created a toolkit for Salesforce app developers [...]