A couple of weeks ago a group from salesforce.com paid a visit to Dell. Among other things, they came to discuss their new product “Chatter” that Dell has recently launched internally and whose virtues Michael Dell has tweeted. Among the salesforce crew was Sean Whiteley, VP of product marketing. I was able to get some time between meetings with Sean and learn more about Chatter.
Some of the topics Sean tackles:
- How Chatter has done since its launch on June 22. What type of traction they’ve seen with customers.
- How Chatter differs from other internal social media platforms (hint: not only can you follow people; records, objects and information within your business applications have feeds as well, e.g. your notified when a presentation changes or a sales deal you’re following moves to a different stage.)
- How the idea of Chatter came up. What role chairman Marc Benioff and his use of Facebook played.
- Currently Chatter is tied closely to CRM but it will be tied to other apps going forward.
- They believe that many more folks will use Chatter than use salesforce.com.
Extra Credit reading:
- eWeek.com: Salesforce.com Seeks to Make Chatter an All-Purpose Collaboration Tool
- BusinessWeek: Salesforce.com Channels Facebook
- An earlier interview I did with Sean: Cloud Pioneer, Salesforce.com
Pau for now…