Marc Benioff unveiled Salesforce.com’s Chatter application on the opening day of the firm’s annual DreamForce conference in Moscone Center In San Francisco.
Salesforce Chatter is a secure, private social network intended for enterprise use. Chatter has social computing features along the lines of Facebook and Twitter and is composed of a Chatter App and a Chatter Social Development Platform.
The Chatter App includes standard social computing features like Profiles, Status Updates, Feeds and Content Sharing. Users of Twitter and Facebook will see familiar functionality and social media tools built into Chatter App.
The Chatter Social Platform; billed as the Collaboration Cloud, will include standard social media and collaboration components as well as Twitter, Google and Facebook developer toolkits. The Chatter Social Platform will also include API’s that will enable developers to integrate data from both cloud and on premise apps into Chatter.
Salesforce Chatter is scheduled to go live in 2010. Chatter will be included in all paid editions of SalesforceCRM and Force.com and a Chatter edition that includes Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Content ad Force.com will be available for $50 per user per month.
Cloud Wars Begin
Amazon also announced a 15% drop in pricing for all EC2 instance families and sizes. This is significant due to the fact that one can expect EC2 competitors like GoGrid and Softlayer to follow suit and lower pricing as well.
Stephen Baker Researches Enterprise 2.0 Consulting
Over on BusinessWeek; Stephen Baker is creating a few articles on Enterprise 2.0 Consulting. Will be interesting to see whether his research indicates that Enterprise 2.0 consulting is a viable industry or more of the sometimes dubious Social Media consulting with an Enterprise twist.
W3C announces OWL2
The Semantic Web group within W3C released the OWL2 recommendation. OWL2 is part of the W3C’s Semantic Web Toolkit and is a standard for representing knowledge on the Web.
Microsoft has recently made a strong push into consolidating mind share amongst Cloud Developers with a relaunched Windows Azure Platform developer portal and targeted adverts on LinkedIn and other social networking sites.
Microsoft technical strategist Steve Marx outlines the Windows Azure Platform for developers in the following video.
GSA launches Apps.Gov
The General Services Administration has launched the long awaited Apps.Gov site. Intended as a one stop shop for US government agencies keen on getting into the cloud, the site lists vendor provided Social Media, Business, Productivity and IT Services applications.
Are Washington Post’s Policies A Sign of The Future?
The Washington Post’s draconian Social Media Policy for its staffers has raised the question of whether strict Social Media Guidelines will become the norm in corporate America.
Is this the Best Enterprise 2.0 Definition?
Bill Ives has posted what is probably the best Enterprise 2.0 definition I have seen to date. Now it will be up to a vendor to actually sell Enterprise 2.0 solutions to a customer with this definition.
