Salesforce.com Chatter Mobile soon: iPhone, iPad, Android, RIM

By Richi Jennings. September 8, 2010.

Salesforce.com is readying a mobile app version of its business social networking and collaboration tool, Chatter. It'll soon be available for iPhone, iPad, Android, and RIM BlackBerry devices. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers ponder "Facebook for the enterprise".

Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention a BSOD rhyme...
(CRM)

Georgina Prodhan reports:

Salesforce.com ... which pioneered the delivery of software as a service ... said on Wednesday Chatter Mobile would be available from later this year for Apple devices and Research in Motion's BlackBerry ... will also be available for ... Google's Android ... early next year.
...
Chatter, a kind of Facebook for the enterprise, allows company employees to create ... profiles, update their status and subscribe to news feeds. ... About a quarter of Salesforce's customers have signed up for the free service since it became generally available in June.

Leena Rao has more:

Chatter was launched as a platform to deliver realtime access to data and information, using social sources, such as YouTube and Twitter. ... Employees can create business profiles with professional information like personal contact data, area of expertise, and work history. ... Colleagues can quickly identify individuals who are relevant to their enterprise needs.
...
As Salesforce’s foray into social collaboration, Salesforce Chatter, gains traction amongst enterprise users ... and as the enterprise increasingly relies upon mobile devices ... there is a strong demand for native mobile use of Chatter.

But Ben Kepes' questions still remain:

A mobile ready Chatter interface is an obvious move – both Twitter and Facebook show huge numbers of users interfacing via mobile apps. ... Location should never be an impediment to social interaction.
...
The provision of mobile apps is an obvious need, but ... [I see] a couple of issues that may potentially create barriers to adoption. ... Firstly pricing. Chatter costs $15/user/month for users without ... an existing salesforce product. ... Large organizations will be reluctant to make this investment across their entire employee base – the paradox in all of this of course is that to be truly game changing, social software needs to be spread as widely as possible throughout an organization.

So Sam Diaz gets social:

Companies will need to get past that “social” comparison used to explain what Chatter is. While it may look and feel like Facebook ... the business use for Chatter feels more like a collaboration tool that can substantially reduce the amount of back-and-forth e-mail among those working on a project.

And Cody Barbierri notes the evolution of enterprise collaboration:

Yammer originally launched as a Twitter for businesses to bring the microblogging service’s sort updates to internal corporate conversations. ... Probably Salesforce.com’s biggest competitor.
...
Jive Software, a ... collaboration-tools startup backed by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, also has mobile features.

Meanwhile, John Taschek talked to a bald Frenchman:

Loïc Le Meur ... discussed his launch of Seesmic for Chatter ... [which] combines and aggregates the social feeds from consumer social services and the enterprise. ... [He says] that social networks are changing the way businesses are run. ... Combining the consumer web experience with the enterprise is vastly important.

And Finally...
BSOD rhyme

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itbw@richij.com.

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