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Salesforce Uses Chatter To Monitor Employees

Posted by timothy on from the eavesdropping-on-their-own-eaves dept.

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."

5 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Somebody finaly read last weeks The Economist by baomike · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:I think its BS... by WCguru42 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Privacy: You've got a smartphone. I've got a smartphone. Everybody's got a smartphone. Seriously, if your employer feels at all hostile or big brother, can't you do you personal email, FB, Twitter, etc. on your phone?

    This. Just this.

    --
    "Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
  3. Re:I think its BS... by ejdmoo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Has anyone actually looked at the product in question?

    Salesforce Chatter is like an internal Facebook. Everything is presumed to be "public" (internally public, that is). Unlike email in a company, there is no presumption of privacy here. No spying or anything.

  4. Of course your being monitored by Nyder · · Score: 3, Informative

    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...
  5. Re:Chatter is a Salesforce product...shrug by MadUndergrad · · Score: 3, Informative

    We use salesforce all day long and yet none of us at work use "chatter". It's almost as if it's a clunky, superfluous facebook-alike shoehorned into what's otherwise a good CRM system.

    Does anyone here on /. actually use chatter?