Salesforce.com launches free Chatter services

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Salesforce.com has released a free version of its cloud-based social collaboration platform Chatter.

In a bid to go viral, Salesforce.com said it would use a social invitation model akin to Facebook, allowing users to invite co-workers to collaborate with them over the app.

Chief executive (CEO) Marc Benioff will be hoping the freemium model will help spread the word about Chatter and lead to upgrades to Chatter Plus, with its added capabilities and a price tag of $15 (£9.50) per user per month.

Chatter Plus, which is only open to customers running the Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition or Unlimited Edition of Salesforce.com products, enables companies to expand collaboration capabilities out to non-Salesforce.com users.

The standard Salesforce Chatter is still free for all companies holding Salesforce CRM and Force.com licenses.

Chatter Free, available now, comes with a number of enterprise features, including support for mobile, real-time feeds and file sharing.

“Our goal is very simple... to get Chatter to everyone,” Benioff told delegates at the annual Dreamforce event in San Francisco, attended by IT PRO.

“Your whole company can be on Chatter for free.”

According to Salesforce.com, over 60,000 customers have signed up to the Chatter service since it was launched earlier this year.

Chatter.com and Chatter Mobile

Two other free services Salesforce.com has launched include Chatter.com, a website where users can take advantage of similar services as the Chatter Free software, and Chatter Mobile.

Chatter.com will be rolled out in February 2011, while the mobile option is available now.

The latter was announced in September and can be downloaded for iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry devices, whilst an Android version will be launched in the first quarter of 2011.

Benioff said his company was not “completely ready” to bring the Android app to market yet, but promised it would be “amazing.”

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