Is Salesforce.com Buying Social Media Helpdesk Assistly?

TalkinCloud is hearing through the grapevine that Salesforce.com might be announcing the acquisition of social media feedback aggregator Assistly at next week’s Dreamforce conference.

According to ZDNet, which originally reported the rumors, the only thing we know for sure is that some kind of Salesforce/Assistly product integration is coming.

But strategically speaking, acquiring Assistly would make perfect sense. Assistly’s value proposition is pulling social media feeds into one interface, allowing help desk staff to interact with customers no matter how they contacted your organization. That fits right into this spring’s Salesforce Service Cloud 3 update, which enables users to open service tickets directly from Facebook.

Obviously, this is still a rumor, and who knows if this Salesforce/Assistly chatter will turn into anything solid. But this seems to be a good time to mention I’ll be at Dreamforce in San Francisco Aug. 30-Sept. 2, so stay tuned for updates.