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."

Comments

I think its BS...

[cybrthng]

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

Re:I think its BS...

[startled]

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.

Re:I think its BS...

[ejdmoo]

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

[sycodon]

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.

Re:Legal...but Creepy

[houstonbofh]

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...

Re:Legal...but Creepy

[arivanov]

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.

Re:Legal...but Creepy

[Sepodati]

This will just move the puppets to those that can exploit a social networking environment.

Somebody finaly read last weeks The Economist

[baomike]

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.

[AnonymousClown]

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.

Chatter is a Salesforce product...shrug

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

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.

Re:Chatter is a Salesforce product...shrug

[MadUndergrad]

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?

Of course your being monitored

[Nyder]

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.

"...even for things they weren't intended for."

[cstacy]

"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?!?