Salesforce.com announced its plans today to acquire Assistly, a startup that gives companies a way to instantly provide customer support by shadowing Facebook, Twitter and other data sources. The deal is reportedly valued at $50 million.

Assistly represents a new breed of apps that bring social technologies to the deepest, darkest places of the enterprise. Assistly provides customers a full view of their customers services issues in a social landscape. It prioritizes conversations and provides tools for people throughout the company to respond to issues.

Assistly is an example of what comes when dark spaces like corporate silos gets illuminated.  The light spreads everywhere. Marshall McLuhan developed the theory that the medium is the message. He wrote about how a lightbulb sits empty of content but its illumination fills dark places. It serves as a way for people to use a lighted area to make new spaces.

Activity stream data shows how information acts in a similar way. The data flowing from these streams create new virtual spaces for interaction.The data makes it possible to create new apps and business processes that further build out the space.

Does this mean Assistly will be a success? The space that Assistly created is still not well-defined. Small businesses fill the Assistly space. Dan Miller, the founder of Opus Research, says that the small business market is not the greenfield people think it is. Small businesses require considerable support even if it does seem that the service is dead simple to use.

The question for Salesforce.com becomes one about scale and cost, Miller says. Assistly could be a money loser for Salesforce.com. Managing a business gets unwieldly when the attention a customer needs becomes more costly than the value of the account.

Services Angle

Yahoo! Storefronts failed due to the high maintenance required to make the online spaces viable. The Salesforce.com Assistly acquisition raises questions about the viability of managing small business accounts. The spaces become inhabitable for the service provider if the occupier can’t manage the space themselves.

Assistly is a very cool service. How often do you go to Twitter to find help? Facebook? If you say yes, you are an early adopter. You are also seeing the gratification that comes with immediate customer support.

For the business, though, the question comes down to the best way to do customer support. Twitter, Facebook, they all serve as a form of shadow customer service. The question is how much attention Salesforce will need to commit to small business customers for them to get the most out of the Assistly service itself.