Salesforce.com's Dreamforce 2009 "Chatter" swag #df09 (Photo: Jessica Tsai / CRM magazine)

At Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, CRM Associate Editor Jessica Tsai is live-twittering Marc Benioff’s opening keynote as we speak — find her tweetstream at @jesstsai, and the conference hashtag is #df09; her coverage will appear here on the blog and over at destinationCRM.com for the rest of the week.

Meanwhile, we thought we’d thrill you with the live-twittering from the company’s conference call with media and analysts last night to discuss its third-quarter financial results.

Benioff and CFO Graham Smith were on the call, and you can find my tweets after the jump.

But first, a teaser — and Comment bait:

• Tu 11/17 Promising a major, MAJOR pair of surprise guests on Thursday at #df09. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17 [Any guesses about #Benioff's teaser? @ciscosystems' John Chambers? @Google's Brin/Page? Leave them in the Comments, below...]
• Tu 11/17 One last guess (for now) abt the “major, MAJOR” guests #Benioff teased for #df09 on Th: #Apple’s Steve Jobs? [Benioff talks at length in his new book about his admiration for Jobs, dating back to Benioff's short stint at Apple in the ’80s.]

Benioff, you’ll recall, made a shocking appearance at Oracle OpenWorld last month — in fact, he referenced it in the conference call (see below). Earlier in the month, Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal at CRM consultancy Beagle Research Group, casually wondered if Larry Ellison might return the favor with an appearance at Dreamforce.

Oh, and here’s the company’s Q3 press release, if you want to read the whole thing.

Salesforce.com is twittering under its corporate handle (@salesforce) and also under an event-specific channel for Dreamforce (@dreamforce).

• Tu 11/17/09 4:45 Total accounts: 67,900 (+16,100, 31%, yr-over-yr). #Salesforce.com Fiscal Q3 Results http://sn.im/sfdc-q310 #sfdc #crm $crm #df09
• Tu 11/17/09 4:30 Full-yr forecast: $1.29B RT @salesforce #Salesforce.com Announces Fiscal Q3 Results http://sn.im/sfdc-q310
• Tu 11/17/09 5:11 On conf call for #Salesforce.com’s Q3 Fiscal 2010 Results.
• Tu 11/17/09 5:11 $1.1B on balance sheet in cash & securities. Annual run rate (revenue) is now above $1.3B.
• Tu 11/17/09 5:12 Marc Benioff on the line.
• Tu 11/17/09 5:13 Added more customers [accounts] this quarter than in any previous quarter. Ever. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:14 [No longer releases subscriber counts except at FY end.] #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:15 [Company had 1.5M subscribers as of 1/31/09.] #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:15 Now boasting of AIG Edison customer win. Also: Japan Post upgraded to Unlimited Edition. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:17 “It’s just not about sales anymore.” #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:18 Listing wins over #Oracle: including ING, American Express. over Oracle CRM On Demand: SuccessFactors. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:18 And then, in same breath: “very personal thx+kind regards 2 orcl for graciously allowing us 2 appear @ Oracle OpenWorld.” #oow09 #benioff [Editors' Note: Here's the Salesforce.com blog about Benioff's appearance.]
• Tu 11/17/09 5:19 SAP, on the other hand, “remains largely invisible.” @sapcrm #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:21 “Service Cloud 2 is really connecting with our customers.” #Benioff #custsvc
• Tu 11/17/09 5:22 “YouTube is a tremendous vehicle” for the company to communicate its solutions. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:22 Now talking up the @ciscosystems partnership: “This is just really cool.” #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:23 And the Twitter integration: “You’ll see a lot more about that tomorrow [@ #df09 ] #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:24 “We have 3 datacenters now.” #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:25 Some of the hosting milestones: 10,000 Web sites — 170M page views. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:25 Half a million custom user interfaces. [Please let one of them be Twitter. =( ] #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:26 188M lines of code have been written in Apex. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:27 Whoa! #Benioff gets loud: “We are going to seriously + comprehensively rewrite the rules [@ #df09 ].”
• Tu 11/17/09 5:28 “We are going to fundamentally change” CRM, apps, cloud computing. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:28 “Going to put my reputation on the line” predicting reaction of the crowd tomorrow. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:28 Going to introduce a 4th Cloud – the Force Cloud. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:30 Promising a major, MAJOR pair of surprise guests on Thursday at #df09. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:31 #Benioff winds down. Moving to CFO Graham Smith.
• Tu 11/17/09 5:32 Int’l revenues grew more rapidly than in No America. #Smith
• Tu 11/17/09 5:33 [Any guesses about #Benioff's teaser? @ciscosystems' John Chambers? @Google's Brin/Page? Leave them in the Comments, below...]
• Tu 11/17/09 5:37 “Don’t anticipate returning to the numbers we saw last year.” #Smith Tu 11/17/09 5:38:05 10% GAAP operating margins. #Smith
• Tu 11/17/09 5:41 [Q4 -- starting now -- is the biggest of the year, he says.] #Smith
• Tu 11/17/09 5:42 Q+A time on the quarterly-results call.
• Tu 11/17/09 5:43 “The technology you’ll see released tomorrow–uh, *announced* tomorrow, not released tomorrow…” #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:45 [1st gaffe of the call, albeit a minor one.] #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:45 “Fundamental product/pkging/pricing/branding strategy…~70K custs to be enterprisewide w/us.” #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:46 “Our strategy is to have our customers need no hardware at all.” #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:48 “I’m pumped up about it – it’s hard for me to not to give away clues.” #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:50 “We’re being mindful and appropriate — it’s still a volatile market.” #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:51 “We’ve always given you #s in Q3–but we realize last time we did that”we ran into the recession. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:51 Huh. #Benioff just said “Financialforce.com is not part of #Salesforce” – [but #sfdc is a minority owner of it. weird.]
• Tu 11/17/09 5:53 There we go: “We invested a relatively small investment” in Financialforce.com. #Benioff [Editors' Note: Here's our original coverage of the Financialforce.com launch.]
• Tu 11/17/09 5:53 “We are still committed to improving margins.” #Smith
• Tu 11/17/09 5:54 “We still see ourselves as a distribution-constrained organization.” #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:56 “Our sales forces are 1/10th to 1/20th the size of the larger players.” #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:57 Paraphrase: We’re balancing giving our shareholders profitability vs. expansion. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:57 “Give the investors what they want: higher margins. But how much more?” #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 5:58 Yay! Someone asks about “the ton of cash” #Salesforce has accumulated.
• Tu 11/17/09 5:58 “We’re very happy w/our cash balance.” #understatement #Smith
• Tu 11/17/09 6:00 “We don’t comment on our M+A activity.” #Smith
• Tu 11/17/09 6:00 “I chose my words carefully:We expect the same *dollar* increase we saw last year [Q4].” #Smith
• Tu 11/17/09 6:02 [That translates into a lower **rate**.] #Smith
• Tu 11/17/09 6:06 “You won’t see us announce any change” to the product structure tomorrow. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 6:09 …and we’re done here. Everyone have fun at #df09 (+ look for @CRM’s Nov09 issue@the show). #Benioff
• Tu 11/17/09 6:10 Contradictions? A #Benioff trademark. ;) RT @kcolaco distribution-constrained…elegantly described.
• Tu 11/17/09 6:35 1 last guess (for now) abt the “major, MAJOR” guests #Benioff teased for #df09 on Th: #Apple’s Steve Jobs?
• Tu 11/17/09 6:50 Ah! More evidence. RT @judis217 Twitter + @Google = top-level #df09 sponsors. Methinks big keynote anncmnt
• Tu 11/17/09 7:02 RT @judis217 Twitter’s down for maintenance tonight, is big #df09 sponsor+keynote’s tomorrow. Coincidence?
• Tu 11/17/09 7:22 RT @salesforce http://sn.im/sfdcmini1117 – Moscone Center is ready for #Dreamforce!
• Tu 11/17/09 7:28 RT @mikojava #DreamForce: 3 parts Dream 2 parts Force. Shake well.
• Tu 11/17/09 7:36 I heard #Benioff say 18K. RT @dahowlett 17K ppl registered for #Dreamforce. Amazing, given economy. [Editors' Note: At the start of today's keynote, Benioff said 19,000.]
• Tu 11/17/09 8:09 As a little birdie just reminded me: Wed: Twitter’s @goldman + #Benioff http://sn.im/sfdc1113
• Tu 11/17/09 8:11 And, on Thu: @adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen + @google’s @davegirouard w/ #Benioff http://sn.im/sfdc1113
• Tu 11/17/09 8:31 But (no offense to them) #Benioff said “major, MAJOR” surprises on Thu, so I say: Chambers, Brin/Page, or Jobs.