Salesforce Uses Chatter To Monitor Employees

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Salesforce Uses Chatter To Monitor Employees

Posted by timothy on Sunday September 12, 2010 @05:00AM 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."

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I think its BS... by cybrthng · 2010-09-12 05:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

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
1. Re:I think its BS... by startled · 2010-09-12 05:37 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  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?
  Chatter: it's a corporate communication service. It's a given that your company is monitoring it. Hell, that's the half the point of using it. So the complaint here is that Salesforce is using yet another half-assed metric to evaluate employee performance? It can't be worse than a dozen other "measures" of employee performance I've seen over the years. Hell, maybe it's better.
2. Re:I think its BS... by Sepodati · 2010-09-12 05:40 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  There's no privacy issue here. The system in an internal collaboration tool. It shouldn't replace face time or evaluations, but like any other tool, it can be abused by employers and employees.
  John
3. Re:I think its BS... by WCguru42 · 2010-09-12 06:37 · 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
4. Re:I think its BS... by ejdmoo · 2010-09-12 08:10 · 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.
Legal...but Creepy by sycodon · 2010-09-12 05:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
1. Re:Legal...but Creepy by houstonbofh · 2010-09-12 05:22 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  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.
  Only if they also own the theater or restaurant. Many people forget that the cell phone and computer and Internet the company pay for belong to them. If you want privacy, use your own computer, phone and Internet...
2. Re:Legal...but Creepy by Eil · 2010-09-12 05:25 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Well, it's a little different. When you're not at work, you have a legal right to not expect your employer to trail you around town. I'm pretty sure you could press harassment or stalking charges pretty easily.
  But this Chatter thing is being billed as "Facebook for business," which implies to me that if you're using this service in an official business capacity, you have no expectation of personal privacy. (And really, the same is true for Facebook itself, but for different reasons.)
3. Re:Legal...but Creepy by tomhudson · 2010-09-12 05:29 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  It's just another example of Web 2.0 Anti-social Networking.
  They don't need to monitor communications to "see who closes cases." That info is already there in the database. It's a lie, and the guy is a liar.
4. Re:Legal...but Creepy by arivanov · 2010-09-12 05:45 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Not quite.
  What this did is to show puppeteers. Every enterprise (and not just in the business sense of this word) has a few of those - people who will never commit to anything face to face, who always work through others and most importantly who never ever carry the responsibility for the clusterf*** they orchestrate. They always use somebody else for cannon fodder.
  I am all for flushing this lot in the open. They are very bad for company morale. If you are driving decisions in an organisation you also must be responsible for them.
  Coming back to the "second gen social apps" - more and more of these will show puppeteers as a side effect. It is a natural result of the social graph being available for analysis. Yeah, it may be creepy, however that it is to be expected - it often takes a creepy method to bring the organisational creeps out in the open.
  
  --
  Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
  http://www.sigsegv.cx/
5. Re:Legal...but Creepy by Sepodati · 2010-09-12 05:58 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  This will just move the puppets to those that can exploit a social networking environment.
6. Re:Legal...but Creepy by Richard_at_work · 2010-09-12 21:19 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  From the sound of it, they aren't using it to "see who closes cases", but rather to see "who was the most involved in helping to get cases closed". Quite often a sales force will have the top tier sales people, junior sales people and a backing of office workers who prep documents, write contracts, manage problems, make appointments, clarify details etc etc. The sales people may close the deal, but who actually did the most work in getting that deal to the point where it can be closed?
They could always just ask. by Alcoholist · 2010-09-12 05:27 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.
1. Re:They could always just ask. by Spazntwich · 2010-09-12 05:31 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Who says anyone's still interested in leadership? Why, leadership comes with responsibilities. Nowadays it's all about getting the privilege and avoiding responsibility at all costs.
Somebody finaly read last weeks The Economist by baomike · 2010-09-12 05:34 · 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.
Re:I think its BS... - I don't. by AnonymousClown · 2010-09-12 05:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

I read it as being able to see who truly adds something to the company as opposed to the BS'ers and the folks who take credit for others work.
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
Chatter is a Salesforce product...shrug by Ritz_Just_Ritz · 2010-09-12 05:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.
1. Re:Chatter is a Salesforce product...shrug by MadUndergrad · 2010-09-12 09:39 · 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?
2. Re:Chatter is a Salesforce product...shrug by BruceCage · 2010-09-12 21:14 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  A few years ago I was working for a consultancy agency where the employees were on the road a lot and I set-up a local private StatusNet installation (then Laconica) to enable them to more easily share "stuff" with each other (mostly sharing news and general thoughts). It was and still is a big hit. So, I can certainly believe people would be using Chatter.
  
  --
  Perfect is the enemy of done.
Bollocks by Ian.Waring · 2010-09-12 07:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.
Of course your being monitored by Nyder · 2010-09-12 09:26 · 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...
"...even for things they weren't intended for." by cstacy · 2010-09-12 14:18 · Score: 3, Insightful

"underscores just how much social networks can be mined for information — even for things they weren't intended for."
Just what did you think they were intended for?!?