Chatter to get mobilised
Cloud computing poster boys Salesforce, are to launch a mobile angle to their Chatter social media service.
When Chatter Mobile launches, users will be able to monitor their Chatter feeds, including posts from colleagues and alerts from apps, as well as post status updates and comment on relevant conversations.
“Chatter Mobile means you can know what is happening in your entire enterprise, wherever you are,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “The combination of devices like the iPad or the new iPod touch with mobile apps like Chatter that push information to you in real-time are making the desktop obsolete.”
Salesforce have said Chatter Mobile will be available at no additional charge for Salesforce CRM and Force.com subscribers. For more info see http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/getstarted/
The only surprising thing about the impending launch of Mobile Chatter is, why it took so long? And why they aren’t available now?
Chatter Mobile apps for BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone and the new iPod touch are currently scheduled to be available in “late 2010” according to Salesforce and poor old Android users won’t see Chatter Mobile for Android devices until “the first half of 2011”. Salesforce are well aware of the power of mobile, it quotes 250,000 downloads from the Apple App Store and more than 100,000 from the BlackBerry App World so it’s surprising that Salesforce didn’t launch the Chatter Mobile on launch – Chatter was launched into general availability on June 22. They also know the figures for mobile usage on Facebook, so why are they taking so long to do mobile with Chatter? Could it be that Chatter was a quick throw-up defence to LinkedIn and FaceBook, surely not? Come on SalesForce don’t sit on your Cloud Laurels.