Three to Tango - SaaS, Social and Mobile

In November 2009, Salesforce.com announced Chatter as its own spin on Social Networking within a business network. In a recent update, Chatter is due to be released as a private beta to some 100 companies. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are predominantly focused on enabling C2C communication. But, it is a just a matter of time before the social network ecosystem starts overlapping with your professional network. Indeed, just today, LinkedIn announced integration with Microsoft Outlook. Xobni and Salesforce.com's Chatter, both allow updates from your extended social networks to be seen within your professional feeds. Now, throw in the whole mobile apps ecosystem, and suddenly you have a hyper-connected interactive world that exhibits the true promise of a networked world.
Due to the low barrier to entry in the SaaS space, we see tons of startups providing solutions to one problem set to make this world in cloud a better place. Where this ultimately leads to is still a big question. My sense is that we are going to see more and more fragmentation of this space before ultimately consolidating in an equilibrium where some companies would be computing power utilities powering the smaller networked applications. On the customer side, in the long term, barriers between professional and personal life would continue to fall. So, tools those allow me to organize my personal and professional information in a better way are going to evolve. Google Wave, Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce.com Chatter are trying to address this issue, but their innovation is naturally biased by their current offerings. Google Buzz is an example. A fresh new approach is required. The big mantra for consumers is going to be "any information, anywhere and anytime". Don't make me log in, don't make me visit different sites. Just hand me what I want.