Salesforce.com has thrown its hat into the ring with the release of their collaboration tool. Chatter Free is initially going to be available only to people in companies with active Salesforce licenses, but that’s already a huge pool of users (one estimate I saw had the number at over 2 million).
This is such a rapidly changing field, and the swell and stem of social networking looks at one moment to encompass the entire human experience – and then the next moment be engulfed in public backlash – that it’s anyone’s guess as to what this will mean in the long term.
I frankly find little utility in a social networking tool that’s restricted to one company, but maybe I just needed to spend more time with Kaiser Permanente’s “Ideabook” this summer. Hard to know.