Salesforce debuts Do.com, a smart social productivity app for small teams | Hacker News Reader

Salesforce debuts Do.com, a smart social productivity app for small teams

venturebeat.com

53 pointsraghus34 comments

Fantastic. From poking around in the console a bit, it looks like Do.com is a Backbone.js app, and is using Handlebars.js for templating.

Yep. CoffeeScript too :)

What you see is just the beginning. If anyone's interested, we're hiring developers and designers: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3060989. We run as an independent business unit within Salesforce, similar to Heroku, and have our own office in downtown SF. Great perks from a large company but all the benefits of shipping as a small team.

Any chance of pinging out an invite code for HN users?

For sure. https://do.com/users/sign_up?invite_code=PROTROSTYBY

Thanks for the invite as well.

Been using Asana about a week now so here's some comparisons:

* I like that less is happening on hove compared to Asana—I find the over-reliance on hovers and background changes (cf. new Twitter) very distracting

* the notes idea is cool

* You have the same issue Asana has with "groups"—can't drag a group together

* I prefer Asana's ability to rely on the keyboard heavily

* You should add drag/drop for file uploads, at least using the right pane as the target. I work on a 10yo application so I know why we don't have it but with apps like this it's a no-brainer. It would also improve the upload flow which I dislike, though Google Docs integration is great.

It looks like that invite code is no longer working - any chance of still getting an invite?

Thanks for the invite!

Designers, come one come all – we need you to make Do the best it can be. http://www.authenticjobs.com/jobs/10457/product-designer

Is there an api?

@jccodez the web app and iOS apps both leverage the same RESTful API. We're planning on opening the API to other consumers as soon as it reaches a ~1.0 state.

Quoting Paul Graham [http://messymatters.com/pgnames.html]:

"Nothing could be less cool, at this point, than calling a startup 'cool.com.' A company with a name like that could not have arisen organically. 'Cool.com' smells of a media conglomerate trying to create a web spinoff."

He has a point, yet getting the do.com domain proves they're taking this quite seriously. I guess the two signals cancel and I'm left neutral about the name. :)

Where that really matters, of course, is for startups like stripe.com and simple.com (formerly banksimple). They have justifiably huge value for their expensive domain names: being taken seriously is life-or-death for them.

Although I dislike all these expensive names -- especially "do" -- on other grounds: http://messymatters.com/nominology

Btw, I'm curious how do.com compares to trello.com...

> A company with a name like that could not have arisen organically

And yet it actually did arise organically in a way, as it is based on an app that the parent company acquired.

It's hardly organic when SalesForce probably put down a giant chunk of change for it.

I mean the product was organic. It wasn't, as pg wrote, a big company going "let's make a product called cool.com!", it was them buying a product, reworking it then changing it's name to cool.com

"do.com" and "cool.com" are not comparable.

1) "do" is a verb 2) "do" describes exactly the value proposition 3) "do" describes the product, not your relationship to it

Good point, "do" is certainly more evocative a name than "cool" would be (unless the latter were in the refrigeration space).

I think it's a lousy name otherwise though. It's, ironically, not even really verbable. Technically it is a verb but not one that you can use to invoke do.com. Imagine swapping 'trello' for 'do' in this sentence:

"Our task list is getting out of hand -- we should trello this."

I think "cool.com" is only comparable to "com.com" which now always redirect back to cnet.com so to speak.

The whole "productivity app" market is saturated, yet new startups or apps come out all the time. Trello is one, Asana is another. And now, Do.

What does this do that is "smart"? The article only mentions one concrete thing that this program does, which is figure out your e-mail address when you send it an e-mail:

For example, send a short e-mail to task@do.com and it will automatically detect your address and add an entry.

I do not think this counts as smart.

Looks remarkably like asana.com, flow.com, orchestra.com... Seriously, how did this happen? The UI, emphasis and core functionality of all these are so similar (even for a narrow category) that this cannot be a coincidence.

I can't speak to how those companies have built their products, but I can say that the inspiration for our product was Manymoon, and a three-pane view was always in the cards. It's a fairly straightforward UI paradigm used across many apps. I'm a huge fan of apps like Reeder and Sparrow, and they take this UI approach as well. As for the focus of the app, stay tuned :)

Happy to see that Salesforce is releasing its own apps on Heroku. It shows they are serious about using the platform as it is, instead of turning it into something enterprisey.

"Do.com has been in private beta testing thus far, but now the team wants to open its beta to more participants. It has extended an invitation for the first 200 VentureBeat readers that sign up using a select link to give it a spin. Go to the link https://www.do.com/users/sign_up and enter the code “DONKISCHESPOZ” to take part. Those who get in will also get 5 invites of their own so they can bring other people into the app."

    "Invite code is not valid"

All the invites have already been given away.

Anyone who got in want to share one of their five invites?

I'd like one too. My Twitter username is @danielwithmusic.

I'd like one too... Please :) ?? My twitter username is @jgnatch

I didn't see your post. Just signed up for the waiting list. But the thing is that if it takes to long people will lose interest, though I have to admit the name/domain is catchy.

They have the cash for acquiring such a domain name for sure. Last time facebook paid 8.5M for fb.com (also two-letter .com domain names)

I think these guys ripped us off, and all they did was go after the low-handing fruit: tasks only. We pushed to add geo-tagging, voice, business card scanning, and some a peer-to-peer CRM system.

Plus, we have a cooler name: http://fieldforceapp.com

I guess we shouldn't expect Salesforce to cannibalize themselves with a mobile CRM solution, but still they could have tried a little harder!

I doubt you got ripped off, given that most people have never heard of you.

I don't know, ask Gopal. But it will be interesting to see if SFDC does anything truly disruptive in this space. Hard to see how shareholders are getting much value from a task manager behind an expensive two-letter domain name!

Sure Marc's got deep pockets, but is there any organic growth here?

Hmm… I've actually never heard of FieldForce.

I can also say with confidence that our strategy complements Salesforce's, and shouldn't cannibalize their offerings in the enterprise software market. Do is for small groups.

You sound bitter, also they have a cooler name.

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