Salesforce Chatter offers all the features you can expect from a ‘microblogging’ system: profiles, following, status updates, feeds, groups and sharing documents and links. In addition it also pulls in data from twitter, facebook so it becomes a social datamart.

A cloud based social collaboration platform is not new, even though this is offered on a tried and tested platform that many organizations trust with their sales data. And if you use Salesforce CRM you also get tight integration with accounts, contacts, opportunities, reports and dashboard.

Even more interesting is that it is architectured to be extended. I expect you should easily be able to add new functionality through the app exchange or build your own on the Force.com platform. As Salesforce puts it: “With the new Chatter social platform, social features and capabilities will be available for any application built and run on the platform”. I’d love to see it built out to more than just microblogging, for example with blogs, wiki’s and workflows.

The product was announce mid november 2009, it is scheduled to become generally available in calendar year 2010. Salesforce Chatter will be included in all paid editions of Salesforce CRM and Force.com.

A new Chatter Edition will be sold for $50 per user per month. Even though this will also include Salesforce Content and Force.com this is a surprisingly high cost. Especially since many microblogging tools are offered much cheaper or even for free.

But for existing Salesforce CRM customers this is an amazing offering. And Salesforce joining this application space is an interesting development.

Surely when you consider an Intranet, or replacing one, it is important to realize what the needs really are. Is your focus internal communication, knowledge management, collaboration, social networking? Do you want an employee directory, CEO blog or a replacement for internal e-mail? In our case, I think we want it all.

And this is where it starts to get interesting, as it is appealing to select a one-size-fits-all solution. But when you review some tools and think some more about it that may not deliver what you expect. That is partly because most tools do not offer all functionality –and the structure- for that, but also because the sheer amount of information may overload people easily. The more I think about it the more I become convinced you need separate solutions to fit all objectives.

An Intranet is aimed at internal communications and knowledge management, possibly with some form of social networking and a staff directory for easy identification of experts and resources. For this you need a blog to write articles, a wiki to collaboratively write up policies, procedures and best practices, a forum if you wish to facilitate discussions.

A collaboration tool is aimed at working together, on projects for example. But what cannot be called a project nowadays anyway? In a project the needs are slightly different. You talk about plans, planning, budget and progress. And it has a clear start and end. Although you could use all the tools of an Intranet the needs are different. More than anything you need document sharing, for example because no-one would transform external documents to a wiki. Task management and planning would come in handy too. And if you want to document best practices, communicate about progress, failures and successes? Use the Intranet.

What is your take on this? What approach does your organization use and what do you think of it?

You should consider this list a starting point, I doubt it is complete. Also it is only fair to say the ratings are done based on superficial screening of the promotional material on the websites. It is probably worthwhile to do a more in depth comparison, but that will take lost of time. If you find a solution missing please add it to the comments and I will check it out and add it also. If you have experience with one of the platforms your input would be highly appreciated in the comments.

Blogtronix rating: five star Blogtronix is an Enterprise Social Platform, with a suite of tools including blogs, wikis, documents & social media. These tools allow users in large and small organizations to build internal and external communities, and collaborate in ways far beyond email. Interesting are also the additional packages including LDAP integration, spreadsheets, workflows, compliance, video blogging, and advanced reports. Available as SaaS, Software, or Appliance.

Brainkeeper rating: one star Promote themselves as the leader in enhanced collaboration. Although they offer pages, blogs, forums, workspaces and more they focus on wiki and a way for people to connect to each other is missing. There seems to be a lot of functionality, maybe too much as the screenshots look cluttered and surely not a nice, clean and comprehensible web 2.0 style. Hosted and integrates with LDAP.

Firestoker rating: two stars Enterprise collaboration that puts the user first and gives your business the room it needs to grow. Allowing those in your organization to connect, collaborate and share in a conversational and comfortable setting. Although the only web page of the company looks intriguing the site does not give any information about the product. No feature list, no screenshots, no pricing, nothing.

IBM Lotus Connections rating: three stars Offers a home page with an overview of social activity, profiles, communities, forums, feeds, wiki, blogs, bookmarks and activities. Complete solution with a modern looking interface.

IBM Bluehouse unrated Interestingly IBM is developing another collaboration solution, most likely to be offered as a service. It offers file sharing, meetings, chat, forms, contacts, activities and live charts. It is currently in beta.

Microsoft Sharepoint rating: four stars Platform for sharing information and working together. It has presence, social networking, wiki, blogs, people and group lists, calendars, e-mail integration (provided you use Exchange), tasks, surveys, document collaboration and issue tracking. Integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products and can be used offline with Microsoft Groove. Highly rated by Gartner.

Novell Teaming rating: three stars Comprehensive solution, formely IceCore until acquired by Novell, that works in collaboration with other Novell tools. Has teaming workspaces, File sharing, Calendars, Forums, Tasks and milestones, Photo albums and custom folders to create helpdesks and guest books. There is also a conferencing client for IM, chat, Presence, Desktop sharing, Whiteboarding and voice conferencing. Integrates with LDAP. A host of functionality but bad looks. There is a VMware testdrive free for download.

Socialtext rating: five stars The very recently release version 3.0 offers a personal dashboard, profiles, group workspaces, collaborative document editing, blogs, comments and ratings, revisions, wiki, notification, mobile access, offline use and feeds. It is Open Source and available as appliance or SaaS based.

System One rating: one star Combines social software, semantic web and information retrieval technologies and runs as a service in standard web browsers. It looks like a wiki combined with contextual display of email, files and documents. It is supposed to work associatively, intuitive and flexible. It is a web-service, either delivered through a central data center or on premise hosting. It’s hard to find any real information on what it does, but its there, somewhere.

Sonar rating: two stars This suite from Trampoline Systems maps expertise, interests and relationships across the business and its external contacts by analysing email, contact data, documents, wikis, blogs and other corporate data. It has a portal (Sonar Dashboard) for employees and a desktop application for managers. It was one of the Red Herring 100 winners in 2008. Hard to find real information about what it does on the website.

Thoughtfarmer rating: five stars ThoughtFarmer is next-generation intranet software: wikis, blogs, discussions, feed, profiles, documents and social networking for effective internal collaboration. Distinguishing is that multi language and organizational chart. It runs on Windows and MYSQL and integrates with LDAP.

Know others or have an opinion on one of these: use the comments.