• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 21, 2010

Salesforce.com has entered into a definitive agreement to buy cloud-based crowd-sourced data services provider Jigsaw for about $142 million, the companies said Wednesday.

The enterprise cloud computing company touted Jigsaw's "Wikipedia-style crowd-sourcing model," which it says delivers the world's most complete, accurate and up-to-date business contact data.

"With Jigsaw, we'll make it as easy as Wikipedia to source data, as easy as iTunes to buy data and as easy as Facebook to stay updated as the data changes," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com.

Subject to closing conditions, the deal also includes a performance-based contingent earn out of up to 10% of the purchase price.

The acquisition will combine Salesforce's suite of CRM applications and enterprise cloud platform with Jigsaw's own cloud-based model for the automation of acquiring, completing and "cleansing" business contact data.

According to Benioff, Jigsaw's data cloud platform also presents an opportunity for developers and independent software vendors to deliver new applications that the companies use to leverage the business contact data.

Founded in 2003, Jigsaw was long criticized for paying people to upload other people's contact information -- a model it has since abandoned.

In an effort to be more transparent, Jigsaw also changed its model so people could see if their personal information had been uploaded, and introduced a process by which they could have that information removed.

According to Jigsaw, its community is now made up of more than 1.2 million members who have built and maintained a contact database of over 21 million professionals at nearly 4 million companies.

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of fiscal year 2011, subject to customary closing conditions.