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Salesforce Uses Chatter To Monitor Employees
storagedude writes "At the launch of Chatter Mobile this week, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said he has been using the Facebook-like business service to monitor employee communications and identify a 'secret network' of employees who are influential in driving the business. Asked if employees felt like they were being spied on by Big Brother, Benioff replied, 'There are certain things appropriate in a business environment. We're not talking about a tea party, we're talking about how to get things fixed.' With 20,000 companies already using the three-month-old service, it is no doubt being put to similar use elsewhere. While Salesforce's use of Chatter to monitor employees appears to be legal, the issue underscores just how much social networks can be mined for information — even for things they weren't intended for."
Privacy shouldn't be ignored just because you work for someone. I remember when peopled used to give a shit and ask you how you were doing or actually paid attention to your job performance. Now i can socially network someone out of a job as well and these corporations still don't get it. Nice
It's no different than management or its agents showing up at the same theater you do or restaurant with the intent on listening to your conversations. Or maybe crashing a neighborhood party and asking your neighbors about you.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Just saying. When did it become hip to spy on people when you can simply ask for their opinion? Isn't communication is what leadership is all about?
Bibo Ergo Sum.
http://www.economist.com/node/16910031?story_id=16910031
Mining social networks
Untangling the social web
Software: From retailing to counterterrorism, the ability to analyse social connections is proving increasingly useful
It's still and interesting article.
And, I think this is wonderful for the shy folks who aren't very good at self promotion. I've seen too many times the big talkers gets ahead while the person that has the actual imagination and talent get left behind because no one noticed them - they're just not the type of people who "toot their own horn" and they're humble.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
There's a shocker...a company monitoring employee use of one of its own products.
Sure, it's a little creepy, but why would any of those employees NOT expect a company like Salesforce (remember, they're in the data mining business) to be looking at employee use of one of their own tools?
Must be a slow news week.
What it should say is that Salesforce.com has released it's own take on a social networking product, which will be poorly adopted by most people but uses a lot of buzzwords to sound like a great new way of tracking productivity. There is nothing sinister going on here, at all.
Is it just me, or does it seem like affluent people act as if they're above the law. Not only that, but they're morally entitled to screw over the poor.
There's sure no shortage of scumbags.
Now that you've identified them, how about rewarding them commensurate to the improvement that they've driven your business to?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This sounds no different than any ticketing/communication tracking software I have had to labor under in my time. The falicy of this type of system is that they can't make the data worth something in an automated fashion as the system does not have the smarts to actualy assign value to the communications. Any of these systems that rely on someone to read the messages and figure out what is actualy going on is doomed to failure either because of coruption or because those who will monitor the messages can not understand what is actualy going on (if it doesn't die from apathy before then). What always seems to happen is that this system will turn into a nice little set of reports and metrics that are virtualy meaningless. These reports will turn into company goals and we will breed a new set of employees that do nothing but try to make themselves look good on the report.
Managment will praise the system as they subvert it to their own ends.
Manager to Boss - "I should get a large raise this year as I have increased performance by 10% based on this metiric of Posts/Call (or some equaly silly mettric)."
Manager to Employee -" I want us to work together, even if you know the answer to someones problem I want you to make sure you ask at least one of your team mates to make sure they agree."
Work Axiom - "You get what you measure"
All of these type of systems are trying to turn worthless managers into somethng useful. The problem with this is that if the manager is able to use this type of system to effect they can probably get the same results without the system. I have yet to work in a place where a good manager doesn't know (in general) what I am doing to help the company or where a bad manager will care.
Chatter messages are posted public by default, anyone can read them. There's no expectation of privacy unless you are posting in an explicitly marked private group.
I believe what Mr. Benioff is referring to as "secret network" is the low-level communications between employees that upper management would never had access to before, so he's seeing what's really going on in the company versus how the org chart says things get done.
IBM has had an asset (module that they sell and tailor for the customer needs) for that for a few years now. It's available for Notes/SameTime users, and builds pretty nice charts about how people interact with each other - and with whom. It's opt-in service for IBMers and used for ie. finding knowledge when the primary person is unavailable.
I was at Cloudforce 2010 London when Marc Benioff said this. You can hear the comment yourself - videos of the presentations are on YouTube. It was a comment that he could see some of the interactions solving customer problems, and he could see some patterns at who were consistently the people who sorted customer problems out well and often. No sophisticated analytics. No big brother. Just a CEO who gained the ability to know what is really happening in his company and who's doing good work. Kudos to him. He and his company seem to be doing a spectularly good job, and Chatter (a sorta Facebook UI for business use) will keep it ahead. Ian W.
What is not put in print , voicemail or mail can not be monitored unless they are using microphones.
It's pretty simple.
Consider everything that your company has you use, to be monitored.
Your computer, your phone, your cubicle/office.
Software they say you have to use.
Sure, that's maybe a bit paranoid, but if you assume it, your less likely to do stupid crap on their equipment that can be trouble for you later.
Be seeing you...
Laugh, they need to identify them, so they can have them train their replacements before they are terminated.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Just what did you think they were intended for?!?
why only workers get monitored?
monitor ur mgr......start now.........xdd......
Chatter is all about "company communication" anyway, its yet another "new" dog and pony product for managers and directors to push on employees so they can look progressive. In the meantime employees know well in advance that its just another "company" chore so they likely ignore it, half-ass it if forced to use it or make a bunch of shill posts if they are the company suck ups. Its no different than the suggestion box, intranet, etc....Nothing to get up in arms about, its near useless, but it makes middle management feel good about themselves.
Aren't the type of people who BS and steal others' credit the ones that tend to end up in management positions anyway? This simply puts them in a position to be the "big brother" that monitors everyone else. I'm sure they will be looking out for threats to their own corporate dominance more than people who are talented and introverted. Corporate management culture remains the way it is decade after decade because the managers favor individuals most like themselves when it comes to promotions, and not necessarily the best person for the job.
If you are the CEO of a company and there is an inner circle of influential employees driving your business and you do not know about them you are not doing your job as CEO.
It is completely reasonable and often a good idea to have an inner circle of high-ability influential employees to drive your business (see, for example, Good to Great, J Collins). It is entirely incompetent of the CEO to not know who they are and not to be using them to build a successful enterprise.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
Do you not think that people will game this service for their own advantage?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Also, this is the information that traditionally communications consultants spend hours gathering through interviews and focus groups.
So I was perusing this comment section because we use Salesforce at work. There are a lot of assumptions about what the service does and does not do. At a glance, Chatter is just: 1- Allowing users to post 'working thoughts', like commentary, against any Salesforce object. For example, in a 24/7 tech support operation leaving comments there to alert future tech reps working on this issue. This is totally redundant because there a usually private/public commentary section defined in the object. This service is extending the ability to comment to all objects in the system. 2- Allows people to "follow" objects, whether that object is a client account, a user of the system, or a support ticket. Effectively, if you "follow" a user you will receive a notification of each action performed by that user. This is obviously where the whole privacy issue comes about. 3- Take up a large section at the top of each page. Bonus! You can "hide" chatter so it only takes up a ribbon-sized section *contentious sarcasm punctuation goes here*
This is the point of the application. Holy crap, where does the spying come in. Posting on Chatter is like sending an email to everyone in the company, and everyone KNOWS this.
But it takes a certain number of people to start making it useful.
Are they spying on me if they read it and make judgments about my intelligence thereby?