Salesforce Launches Chatter.Com

Salesforce.com today announced the public availability of Chatter.com, enabling every company to create a free, private social network. To get started, any employee can simply register his company email address at Chatter.com.

Leveraging the social features popularized by Facebook and Twitter - such as profiles, status updates, and real-time feeds, Chatter lets employees "follow" documents, people and groups. The result is a new level of productivity that breaks down department and organizational barriers.

Chatter.com allows users to connect and collaborate with their colleagues. Employees can leverage Chatter.com to:

• connect with experts;
• collaborate with remote employees;
• share large files;
• prepare for sales presentations;
• manage team projects;
• discuss confidential topics;
• get answers;
• share important information with coworkers;
• solve customer issues; and
• brainstorm marketing ideas.

In a recent customer satisfaction survey of more than 6,000 global salesforce.com customers, executives reported that Chatter is making their employees more productive - with 28 percent fewer meetings and 32 percent less email. In addition, nearly 50 percent of the users surveyed said they could find information faster than ever before.

Chatter has allowed salesforce.com to expand beyond sales organizations, and bring a new wave of collaboration to employees across the enterprise. Companies including Dell and Reed Exhibitions have already rolled out Chatter enterprise-wide.

Chatter.com will be featured in salesforce.com's first ever broadcast advertisements that will debut on Super Bowl Sunday, February 6. The spots were directed and produced by will.i.am of the musical group The Black Eyed Peas in collaboration with salesforce.com's in-house marketing team using Chatter.com to create the two television advertisements in record time. "During the production of the two commercial spots, we were collaborating on documents, scripts, artwork, downloading, uploading, all securely in the cloud using Chatter. Any task can be solved when you have a team working cohesively," said will.i.am, director and executive producer at Dipdive and director of the Chatter.com television commercials.

"Now with Chatter.com, any company can do impossible things as a team," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com.

Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal at Beagle Research, calls Chatter.com "exciting." "Over the years, an endless onslaught of email and meetings has built a barrier to creativity and productivity," he says. "That's why Chatter.com is so exciting: It drives employees to share knowledge and expertise, close more deals, and solve customer problems."

Chatter.com is now generally available at no charge to anyone with a company email address. It is included for free with all paying user licenses of Salesforce CRM and Force.com. Chatter Plus user licenses are available for customers using Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition, or Unlimited Edition for $15 per user, per month.