Salesforce.com expands Chatter collaboration platform

Salesforce.com is pitching Chatter as "Cloud 2"

Seeking to expand its enterprise social networking offerings, software-as-a-service (SaaS) specialist Salesforce.com has introduced a new range of products.

The company said that it would be expanding its Chatter platform to include a new marketplace service as well as adding new customers to the beta test of the social networking service.

First announced in the autumn of 2009, Chatter has so far been limited to closed tests for developers. Now, the company is hoping to extend the tests to include some 250 companies running the Saleforce.com Service Cloud service.

Additionally, the company said that it would be allowing developers to create plug-in applications for Chatter. Known as the ChatterExchange, the new program will be offered as part of the AppExchange service and will seek to supplement the social networking aspects currently offered by the collaboration tool.

The moves are part of a new platform Salesforce refers to as "Cloud 2". The company said that by adding social networking and collaboration features to web services, a new class of enterprise cloud computing services was being created.

"With today's announcement, Salesforce.com is advancing the shift to Cloud 2, where productivity gains are going to come from real-time collaboration available on any device," said Salesforce founder and chief executive Marc Benioff.

"We've seen the future of enterprise software, and it looks more like Facebook on the iPad than Yahoo on the PC."