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SalesForce.com acquires Clipboard, plans to shut it down.

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Re: SalesForce.com acquires Clipboard, plans to shut it down.

#41

Post by DigitalSea »

Bookmarking services are the new stock market it would seem. Feels like there have been numerous acquisitions and shutdowns of bookmarking services in the last 12 months. A good talent acquisition on Saleforce's part in the form of Gary Flake. He's regarded as one of the best engineers in the industry, he's really smart and will no doubt bring a lot of value to Salesforce.

I understand a lot of people are frustrated, but at the end of the day, you're using a free service and to be honest not many start-ups are in it for the long-haul. Clipboard never quite got the traction it deserved.

Re: SalesForce.com acquires Clipboard, plans to shut it down.

#42

Post by grakic »

pajju wrote: post #34

I admired their innovative way of clipping, DOM manipulation, one of the best engineering teams of our time! Well, this must be a team-hire. Pinterest did pinning with just images, these guys did for grabbing any web content! Amazing. A great blogger tool. But once you start grabbing web content it starts to look like a bookmarking service. That's were they headed to. I would have paid them an yearly subscription. An…

I was sad about the shutdown, calling stupid names and all that. But then I tried the export feature and it is great. Now I have complete offline copy of all my clips.

Re: SalesForce.com acquires Clipboard, plans to shut it down.

#43

Post by kenperkins »

pajju wrote: post #34

I admired their innovative way of clipping, DOM manipulation, one of the best engineering teams of our time! Well, this must be a team-hire. Pinterest did pinning with just images, these guys did for grabbing any web content! Amazing. A great blogger tool. But once you start grabbing web content it starts to look like a bookmarking service. That's were they headed to. I would have paid them an yearly subscription. An…

one of the early name ideas for Clipboard was tidbit. :)

Re: SalesForce.com acquires Clipboard, plans to shut it down.

#44

Post by famousactress »

cpursley wrote: post #39

There's nothing wrong with selling to the right suitor but completely shutting down the product? Is anybody building a company for the long-haul these days, or has the home flipping bubble just moved over to the startup world? We need to start a trend / honor system for startups to sign so users know they won't be shafted down the road. I'm going to start a startup that has some standard legal docs that says you won'…

Honestly, I doubt almost any of the aqui-hire deals happened because the team didn't care about or want the product to work out. I assume this is more often a soft-landing for failure.. companies that aren't working out, finding their model, or gaining enough traction.. so the team ends up taking a signing bonus to jump somewhere together.

Is there much evidence people are really starting shops just to prove their team is worth hiring?

Another note: a reasonable sign that you're at risk of getting 'shafted' as a user is that the company is relatively new, definitely not profitable, and you're not paying for the product.

Re: SalesForce.com acquires Clipboard, plans to shut it down.

#45

Post by stmchn »

This is a bummer but I admire how they've handled the acquisition. I was an avid user of Punchfork until its acquisition and was bummed with the way they handled user data (More info here: https://github.com/fictivekin/openrecipes#the-story)

I'm really glad they're giving users complete control to acquire their data and, even better, that they're encouraging developers to use their data and import it into other tools.

Re: SalesForce.com acquires Clipboard, plans to shut it down.

#46

Post by thoughtcriminal »

dreadsword wrote: post #5
Zikes wrote: post #2

Launching an online bookmarking service seems like a pretty stable retirement plan nowadays.

Well, it makes sense: no one has come up with the magic formula to deal with the over abundance of information available today. (Disclaimer: see my submissions for my own ongoing attempt).

LinkThing: http://linkthing.com is pretty awesome. People should check it out, seriously.

Re: SalesForce.com acquires Clipboard, plans to shut it down.

#47

Post by comex »

jcrites wrote: post #33
dreadsword wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it makes sense: no one has come up with the magic formula to deal with the over abundance of information available today. (Disclaimer: see my submissions for my own ongoing attempt).

One of the core features I've wanted from a bookmarking service was the capability to store the actual /content/ of the bookmark indefinitely. I want to recall having read an article or paper years later in conversation, say "Let me find the citation for you", and then actually follow up! And still have the original content even if the URL was taken offline, which happens an unfortunate amount. Luckily, Pinboard (pin…

I used to use Furl for the content-saving feature. Its eventual shutdown has made me wary of any bookmarking or other archival service that I can't host myself.

Re: SalesForce.com acquires Clipboard, plans to shut it down.

#48

Post by plyleung »

dreadsword wrote: post #5
Zikes wrote: post #2

Launching an online bookmarking service seems like a pretty stable retirement plan nowadays.

Well, it makes sense: no one has come up with the magic formula to deal with the over abundance of information available today. (Disclaimer: see my submissions for my own ongoing attempt).

No one's come up with the magic formula yet but I do believe there's one out there. It's a matter of who finds the magic formula. I've created a website with a friend that saves the text that people want to keep. You can check it out at http://www.quotered.com

Re: SalesForce.com acquires Clipboard, plans to shut it down.

#49

Post by plyleung »

grakic wrote: post #42
pajju wrote: post #34

I admired their innovative way of clipping, DOM manipulation, one of the best engineering teams of our time! Well, this must be a team-hire. Pinterest did pinning with just images, these guys did for grabbing any web content! Amazing. A great blogger tool. But once you start grabbing web content it starts to look like a bookmarking service. That's were they headed to. I would have paid them an yearly subscription. An…

I was sad about the shutdown, calling stupid names and all that. But then I tried the export feature and it is great. Now I have complete offline copy of all my clips.

Clipboard's great for clipping all sorts of things from pictures to articles and text. If you use Clipboard primarily for saving text and are looking for a replacement, you might be interested in a website called QuoteRed (http://www.quotered.com) which I built with a friend.

Re: SalesForce.com acquires Clipboard, plans to shut it down.

#50

Post by simplekoala »

dmbaggett wrote: post #38
sriramk wrote: post #36

One key bit here is Gary Flake, the founder/CEO of Clipboard is a industry legend and is a key hire (I believe he's going to become VP of Engg at Salesforce). If a talent acquisition, Salesforce is getting great talent.

He's also a super-nice guy and went to grad school at U Maryland -- go terps!

Amen to that
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