Salesforce.com + Facebook = Faceforce

Clara Shih, an AppExchange product manager at Salesforce.com has created a mashup between Salesforce and Facebook called FaceForce.  Jeff Grosse has a detailed explanation of what it does at CRM-FYI:

Now in Salesforce, if you look at a Contact that you’re friends with on Facebook, you can see their Facebook profile right inline with their Salesforce contact record.  It even allows you to perform regular Facebook actions such as Send a Message, Send a Gift, Write on Wall, Message, view their Full Profile, and even the curious Poke.

At the Lead level, the S-control will search Facebook for the lead and show possible matches.  If that is the person, you can link them to into the lead so you have access to all their Facebook data inline with your lead data.

At the Account level, the S-control will display all the Facebook connections you have with that company and allow you to take numerous Facebook actions, right from the Account record.

Whenever making a cold sales call, you want as much information as possible about the contact. Given that Facebook members freely give up large amounts of personal information, this could prove extremely useful. As Jeff correctly surmises:

Yet, as a user of both platforms, you can now connect the dots, having more information at your fingertips, inline with the applications you use everyday to build deeper relationships with your customers and prospects.

For the curious,  Clara has created an impressive Flash demo. A first look suggests this is one of the most powerful (by which I mean seriously useful) Facebook applications to date. The question now is whether this will become a major talking point at the upcoming Dreamforce show.