Salesforce.com Wants To Be The New LinkedIn

Salesforce.com officially rolled out a new and improved version of its enterprise chat product on Thursday, a tool it calls Community Cloud.

And it wants to take on, or at least mimic, LinkedIn with the new product.

Community Cloud is like a custom, private version of LinkedIn for businesses, it says. It lets companies connect with customers, employees, and partners to chat, share files, and so on. It also inks them to apps, news, and other things that people need to do their jobs and help customers.

In a press release, Salesforce explains:

LinkedIn is an example of a company, that, among other things, in the consumer world, has created a community for recruiters and job seekers. Members can personalize their job search, connect with colleagues and discover and share information about job openings-all from any device. Today, companies want to create their own communities with the same personalization and mobile access of LinkedIn, that are also completely connected to their business processes.

Community Cloud isn't a brand-new product, but an update of a product released about a year ago. Salesforce offered some stats on how well that product is doing: 2,000 active communities, including customers like Cornell University, GE Capital, Honeywell, Key Bank, Pearson, Pono Music, State of Colorado, and Tata Communications. It also said that Deloitte Digital has signed on as a partner to help sell Community Cloud. It says pricing for the service starts at $500 per month.

Salesforce certainly isn't the only one trying to nab a piece of $3.5 billion enterprise collaboration market. Companies from all enterprise sectors are doing the same, including Jive Software, Microsoft with Yammer, Huddle, Atlassian, Cisco, and Infor. All want their customers to use their products to chat and collaborate.

Here's what Salesforce's version of LinkedIn looks like, linking to graphics and a poll.

Here's the full video: