Salesforce.com Chatter Organizes Corporate Collaboration

Mark J

Updated · Apr 13, 2010

While Facebook organizes data around users, Salesforce.com’s Chatter offering is organized around customers, opportunities, and solutions. As noted in this Computer World story, Chatter has the immediacy and feel of a Facebook but offers something you don’t find in most CRM systems: the latest competitive sales tactics or customer problem solutions.


“Meanwhile, a quarter-billion people are looking at Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter on a regular basis. All kinds of information is shared quickly and easily. If you want up-to-the-minute information on a topic, you wouldn’t go to the New York Times. You’d look at a social networking site. So why would you go to a formal KM system for the latest competitive sales tactics or customer problem solutions?

“Enter Chatter, Salesforce.com’s offering that applies social networking metaphors to the problem of collaboration. It has the immediacy and feel of a Facebook, but is organized around customers, opportunities, and solutions rather than ‘users.’ When somebody at your company updates a relevant document or record in the system (such as a contract or a case), the people who are following (read: are subscribed to) that item are given immediate updates. The moment a problem has been solved, people with interest in related cases are notified. Chatter feeds can automatically generate notifications based on changes in up to 20 fields per object – so notifications can get pretty detailed.”

Read the Full Story at Computer World

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