Salesforce moves forward with Chatter

Salesforce.com has rolled out the first developer previews of its Chatter collaboration service.

The company said it would allow a group of 250,000 developers to access the new service through the Force.com cloud computing platform.

Chatter was first announced last autumn at the company's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. At that time, chief executive Marc Benioff predicted that the service would be the company's "biggest and most exciting announcement ever."

Designed to function as a social networking toolkit for the Force.com platform, Chatter will allow developers to incorporate social networking functions such as user profiles or Twitter feeds through Force.com enterprise applications.

"Since deploying Chatter internally, Salesforce.com has witnessed firsthand that real-time collaboration shatters traditional barriers to success," said Parker Harris, vice president of technology.

"We're launching the Chatter developer preview for our developer community so members can see what's possible with the collective creativity and imagination. "

In addition to the preview, the company plans to launch a special "DevZone" site where developers can collaborate on projects and share ideas for the new service.

The company said the full Chatter service was scheduled to go online later this year.