The VAR Guy

Chatter, Salesforce.com’s social platform, is launching on June 22nd, and companies like Bank of America have already jumped on board, meaning it’s grabbing attention. There’s still a lingering question, though: Will Chatter gain the allegiance of enough ISVs to develop the platform into a proper ecosystem? Here are some thoughts.

The first thing to remember is that Chatter is compatible with all Force.com applications, which means that Chatter already has thousands of apps feeding into its social web. There are a lot of fans of pure status-driven social networking out there, I know, but the fact that ISVs don’t have to retool existing products to get information out there should go a long way.

But in terms of original applications made specifically to take advantage of Chatter’s strengths, well, I’ve not heard much. The official Chatter developer blog lists a few out there, but they never seem to extend past clever toys like the ability to post classified ads to your followers.

An exception to that is the just-launched Dealmaker Pulse from The TAS Group, which adds business intelligence with deal alerts to the Chatter social feed. But even that also works with the CRM solutions of competitors like Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP.

I’d like to think, for Salesforce.com’s sake, that when Chatter launches next week it’ll come with a bevy of developer partner announcements. But for right now, this is still an open question.

Sign up for The VAR Guy’s Newsletter; Webcasts and Resource Center; and via RSS; Facebook; Identi.ca; Twitter and VARtweet.

Read More About This Topic

• Cloud Channel Summit: Do VARs Really Need to Go Vertical?
• SUSE Linux Prepares Partner, Customer Surprises
• Cisco: Software Push Includes Closer Microsoft Engagement
• Six Channel Partner Blog Entries The VAR Guy Didn’t Write: Jan 14
• Binary Tree Moving IBM Lotus Notes Users to Microsoft Cloud