CEO Benioff goes from "cloud" to crowd.

Benioff chats about Chatter. Photo: Salesforce.com

Marc Benioff, the man who invented cloud computing at least as much as Al Gore invented the Internet, is pushing a new idea. It's called Chatter, a mashup of Facebook and Twitter for the workplace that his company, Salesforce.com (CRM), plans to begin selling next year.

Salesforce.com's main product is something most worker bees will never see. It's an online tool that salespeople use to record their prospects and completed deals. It has done so well because it mimics far more expensive software pioneered by Siebel Systems, which is now owned by Oracle (ORCL), where Benioff began his career. Benioff, a relentlessly effective marketer, pioneered the concept that companies could rely on Web applications for what previously had been complicated software programs that resided on corporate computers. Salesforce.com is so successful (and popular with investors) that it's worth $8 billion, a mere 100 times Wall Street's estimated earnings for the company's current fiscal year.

The reason Benioff is jazzed about Chatter is that it represents an opportunity for everyone in the corporate world to use Salesforce.com software, not just salespeople. Chatter gives all employees the ability to broadcast and tune in to people in their own company, much in the way the two buzziest social-media sites enable communication among groups of like-minded people and, more specifically, their friends. "Twitter and Facebook have opened the door to the enterprise world to  walk through," says Benioff. More

Marketing online is about more than jumping on the social media bandwagon

By Sam Cece, CEO, StrongMail Systems.

A decade ago, the term social media didn’t mean much to consumers, let alone marketers and corporate executives.

Cece says platforms change but good marketing principals prevail. Photo: StrongMail

Today, none of us can get away from the term – it’s everywhere. Companies are jumping on the social bandwagon, erecting fan pages on Facebook, developing corporate Twitter accounts, creating groups on LinkedIn and producing channels on YouTube–all in the name of reaching, engaging and influencing customers on a more personal level.

While the game has certainly changed, it feels as if the social media pendulum has swung a bit too far in one direction. But by taking a closer look, it becomes clear that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Social media isn’t new (email is considered by many to be the first social network), word-of-mouth marketing has been around for decades (look at the way Amway and Mary Kay Cosmetics products are sold) and viral marketing isn’t a fresh idea (arguably the pyramid scheme, which dates back to Charles Ponzi, was fueled by viral marketing). More

How social networking can transform the CIO into a superhero

By Alan S. Cohen, vice president enterprise, Cisco

Workers unite! Cohen says social networks can empower employees. Photo: Cisco

I recently spent a few days with 100 of Cisco’s (CSCO)  top customers, Chief Information Officers (CIOs), representing a range of industries – private and public and geographies. These folks are often the unsung heroes of  their organizations, enabling employees to perform great technological feats while helping management wring huge cost savings from their budgets.

During our time together, the conversations focused on how work has changed: from local to global, from centralized to decentralized, and increasingly, from live to asynchronous or even virtual.

In the past 20 to 30 years, our customers’ organizations have invested tens of billions of dollars in transaction systems – from ERP to email – to reduce latency and inefficiency in value chains. This considerable investment underpins the heart of the “Six Sigma,” process-driven revolution that became the ultimate strategy for operational excellence. However, today we’ve reached the zenith of transactional gains.

So, from where is the next wave of innovation and productivity emerging? Allow me to posit a simple answer: from people. More

At least one company is making money off of social networking. The game developer behind 'FarmVille' and 'Mafia Wars' has seen its web-based games take off – and deliver profits.

Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga

On any given day 500,000 tractors are sold on the Internet. But don't start buying stock in John Deere or Caterpillar just yet. These are $20 "virtual" tractors that belong to the 50 million players of FarmVille, the largest and fastest-growing social game on the Internet.

Social games are free online applications accessed through sites such as MySpace and Facebook. If you've spent any time on either site you're probably familiar with titles such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Caf World. All three games, which rank among the top five games played daily on Facebook, were developed by San Francisco-based Zynga, one of the tech sector's most talked-about companies these days.

Behind the buzz: Annual revenue at the two-year-old firm is likely to surpass $100 million this year, prompting speculation that the company — backed by the likes of LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and PayPal cofounder-turned-investor Peter Thiel — will soon go public. The software company also has managed to do something that other hot online brands such as Twitter and Facebook have not: Zynga has found a way to make social networking profitable.

Zynga was founded in 2007 by Mark Pincus, 43, who also started social-networking site Tribe.net and software company SupportSoft (SPRT), which eventually went public. (The name Zynga is a misspelled tribute to his deceased American bulldog, Zinga.) While many of his Web 3.0 peers rely on advertising and sponsorship for revenue, Pincus makes its money by getting gamers to buy virtual goods, like tractor fuel or land in the case of FarmVille, that enable players to build bigger farms at a faster rate.

By developing games on social networks, Zynga is able to capitalize on the viral nature of the platform. (Zynga estimates it has 70 million monthly unique visitors.) Gamers can invite friends to join them in the game, and they can send updates on their progress to their friends, stoking interest. More

Consumers transfer their PC habits to handsets, then proceed to do even more online.

Simpson: Mobility ups the ante for Internet usage. Photo: Novarra

By Bruce Simpson, CEO, Novarra

Forget about webmail: Social networking and content sharing sites like Facebook, Flickr and Craigslist are now the most visited Internet sites on mobile devices, according to recent usage data from my company, which provides mobile Internet software.

Social media are redefining what it means to be constantly connected and accelerating the transition of the mobile Internet from merely “always on,” to “always on, always active.” This new paradigm promises to have a significant impact on society, enabling consumers to communicate anytime, anywhere – proactively.

At first blush this seems like a classic situation where everybody wins: Consumers are eager to transfer PC web habits to mobile. In one recent study, 30% of 16- to 35-year-olds accessed Facebook and Twitter via their mobile devices.

But unlike PCs (and even bulky laptops), the four billion mobile phones deployed globally are with consumers at all times; this means the so-called “window of engagement” on mobile devices is 20 to 30 times greater than on computers. More

Social-networking site Tagged.com has become a target of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and the bane of a multitude of customers.

"There's a thin line between clever and stupid," went the faux maxim from Spinal Tap, yet it seems to apply pretty well to Web startups. One of the most notoriously over-the-line is the social-networking site Tagged.com, which New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says he plans to sue for false advertising, deceptive business, and identity theft. More

Biz Stone says site soon will launch "Twitter 101" for corporations 

In an interview that was alternately irreverent and earnest, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on Thursday said he expects the company this year will reveal its plans making money. He also noted that Twitter still does not have a head of sales.

Stone said the public’s infatuation on Twitter making money was like a “nice loving mom who wants make sure you’re eating.” But Twitter, which he said will always be free, also wants to make a profit while still being a force for good. He doesn’t think the two goals are mutually exclusive.

“We want to have a real positive impact on the world,” he said at Fortune’s Brainstorm TECH conference. “The only way we can do that is to make tons and tons of money.”

Stone noted that one of the major things that put Twitter on the map this year was newsworthy events, such as the election, the protests in Iran, and the Mumbai terrorist attacks. But the high level of awareness from the public about Twitter doesn’t necessarily mean engagement with the product, and he said the company would be addressing that over the coming weeks and months.

Stone also responded to questions about a recent security breach when hacked internal financial documents appeared on the Internet.

“The documents were thought exercises more than anything else,” he said. “The takeaway is that we’re thinking long term and thinking big.”

He declined to comment on whether Twitter would sue or if the FBI is involved.

Stone also noted that Twitter will be launching an educational sub-site for companies, “Twitter 101,” either today or Friday.

The company has grown to 55 employees, but Stone said that it still has a lot of growing to do.

“We’re a two-year-old company,” he said, adding that they don't want to be like that childhood actor "who grew up all freaky. We want to be like Ron Howard.”

For anyone who’s wondered what ‘tweeting’ can do for business, here are the keys to using Twitter.

By Kim Thai, contributor

Thousands of companies have hopped onto the Twitter bandwagon, trying to find a way to bring in business (and hopefully, revenue) one tweet at a time. But it isn’t as easy to Twitter — especially for companies — as one might think.

For those who don’t know: Twitter’s a micro-blogging site that allows users to communicate with each other in 140 characters or less. Think of each “tweet” as a text or instant message — not really directed at anyone but visible to everyone. And those who want to follow particular people's tweets can simply subscribe to their feed for real-time updates.

But don’t mistake it for a fluke: In the last year, Twitter traffic has multiplied almost 15 times over, with more than 37.3 million unique global visitors in May, according to comScore. And as tweeting becomes hotter, companies feel more pressure to join the social-networking tool in order to stay competitive. But many are struggling to understand Twitter culture and, as a result, their tweets can come off as desperate or inadvertently turn away potential customers.

So to help you avoid any Twitter faux pas and maximize your tweeting potential, here are five rules for using this social networking tool that’ll keep your company ahead of the competition. More

A brief history of social technology, and what it means to you

By Gina Bianchini, CEO and co-founder, Ning

Ning's Bianchini says social networks are evolving

At the outset of online social networking, around, say, 2002, early users had to wedge their personalities into static, cookie-cutter profile pages — it was the price we all paid for the convenience of this new and powerful social tool.  How times have changed: Instead of altering yourself to fit the social network, the social network is evolving to cater to you. Here's a quick look at how companies and technologies have evolved to more closely mirror the human experience.

Social Networking Infancy – The Early Days

Social technology ties people together in new ways. It makes it easy to meet or reconnect with people, discover and share ideas and content, and consume news and events across the Internet. Friendship takes on an entirely new dimension online, and media consumption and sharing –photos, music, and most of all video –are changing and rates never before seen on the Internet. It is a revolution that spawns companies like MySpace, YouTube, Photobucket, and even Facebook. More