Salesforce shutters Do.com, what will it reincarnate as?

In the tech world, it is common for a big brand to acquire a small brand and gobble up its features into its own, and sometimes the company is simply shut down, never to rise again. Questions surround the closure of a very popular task management tool, Do.com, acquired in 2011 by and now shuttered by Salesforce.com.

The Do.com service will shut down as of January 31st, and it is no longer accepting new sign ups. Their goodbye note is vague, but mentions it is working on an export tool for current Do.com users. They will stop charging for services as of November 1st.

What does this closure mean?

Many analysts are lamenting the closure, particularly in light of the implications for Salesforce customer service platform, Desk.com, as many learned to use both tools. Do.com has long helped teams to manage tasks, notes, contacts, and projects, and was acquired for somewhere between $25 to $35 million.

Salesforce’s acquisition pattern is unlike many tech companies, as they will go years after an acquisition before integrating or ditching services, moving slower than perhaps some others, leaving a cloud of mystery around their plan – perhaps designed that way.

Ideally, however, Do.com could simply become fully integrated into Salesforce, for use only by Salesforce clients, filling in the task management gap the service so sadly lacks. Perhaps it could become part of Salesforce Chatter, the enterprise social network, but Chatter’s future is also unclear, given that Salesforce acquired video conferencing tool, DimDim years ago, but has yet to integrate it into Chatter as has been suspected it would.

Is this a case of bad acquisitions, poor implementation strategy, or just a slow moving giant ship, slow to integrate tools they own into their popular offering? We suspect Do.com will ultimately become part of Salesforce’s Desk.com or Chatter, but it could also be a sunsetting for reasons they have not made public.