Social Media as a business application

A few days ago, I was watching an interview on ‘Mad Money’ with the CEO of Salesforce.com, Marc Benioff.  Mr. Benioff was introducing Salesforce’s new social medium platform for businesses, Chatter – just like Facebook for business.

This idea of using a “Facebook” type of application for a small company is brilliant, it’s a great way to communicate with all employees, or specific employee groups, and even more brilliant as a way for management to get information that they might not necessarily see.  Using a social networking site will all for instant collaboration, give a real time “snap shot” of the company, and allow management to gain valuable insight.

Today, NY SportsMed is launching Yammer, similar software to Salesforce’s Chatter, but free.  Yammer sells upgraded Silver and Gold packages for a few dollars per user. Yammer is set up just like Facebook, but it is a closed group to just people with company email addresses.  (I am reluctant to endorse products here, but this one is very cool and free).

Some of the features that I look forward to using:

Profiles – employees can share important information on their profiles

Status Updates – Share insight or a tip of the day, front-of-the-house staff and back-of-the-house staff can collaborate.

Groups – work groups can share information and work together across different locations

Document Handling – we can post important documents, such as the employee manual so people know where to go to find it.

App updates– employees (and managers) can get updates via sms or an iPhone app.

NY SportsMed will be testing Yammer our today, I will keep you posted.