Whenever I think of the word “chatter,” it takes me back to thewonderful movie “The Music Man” with Robert Preston. For those ofyou who aren't familiar with the musical, Preston plays a flim-flamman in 1912 who charms the small Midwestern town of River City,Iowa, with his promise to turn all the youngsters into a schoolmarching band with instruments and uniforms and the necessarylessons for just a small fee.

Of course, the character Preston plays, Dr. Harold Hill, “adoctor of musicology,” doesn't know the first thing about music orplaying any instruments, let alone putting together a band; butmost of the people are mesmerized by his charm, doubletalk and, didI say, charm.

There are a few people who don't believe him. Among them are thetown mayor and his wife, played in the film by Hermione Gingold,who leads the “Ladies of River City” in a number of scenes.Whenever they get together they talk like chirping birds andchatter about everything and everyone; hence my mental link.

Business collaboration

For me, the word sounds old, but the products and servicescoming from Chatter.com, a product of Salesforce, isanything but. It is a business collaborative tool that leveragesvarious social media-type platforms to present to companies afamiliar but totally flexible environment.

There are a number of collaborative tools in the market to helpcompanies work more efficiently, I've worked with several of them,but none so entrenched in the new technologies of mobile devicesand cloud computing as Chatter, which at the same time is totallyfree of cost.

Chatter is strictly for internal use by a company because thepermissions are based upon e-mail addresses, all of which mustshare the same company domain name. In this way, Chatter allows youto control access to various levels and appoint administrationpeople without having to worry about security or any of the“conversations” going outside the company.

Related: Read “CloudCommuting Evolves.”

In a similar manner that people use Facebook to connect with oldfriends or school alumni, Chatter helps you connect with coworkerswithin your own company, regardless of location, to share businessinformation securely and in real time.

Each employee within a Chatter account creates a profile forthemselves, which will include contact information, a photo, an“About Me” section, a Chatter feed, a list of followers and a listof people being followed, much like a Twitter account.

You can invite other colleagues from your company to joinChatter. This comes in handy if you're part of a group activity inwhich all of the participants are not yet part of Chatter.

Chatter groups let you collaborate on specific projects withcertain people. It's much like groups in LinkedIn, in which yourrequest to join needs to be approved or in other platforms likeQuora (a wiki-like platform for finding answers to questions) whereyou need to be invited by an existing member.

Chatter groups can be either public or private (remember,“public” still only means public to employees of the company) andanyone can create a group.

With a group in place, the collaboration can begin. WithChatter, you can upload a file and share it with a specific person,all members of your group or anyone else within Chatter forfeedback. Group members can “follow” the file so they are notifiedwhen a change is made and a new version is uploaded. BecauseChatter tracks history, you can view all previous iterations of thefile.

Because all collaboration within a single company account isacross Chatter, you can use the global search function to findcertain topics and all the discussions and work being done.

Similar to other social networking platforms, Chatter makes“recommendations” to you on people or groups you might want tofollow. A lot of it is based upon what people or groups youcurrently follow and what other people like you also follow.

Indicating people or groups you'd like tofollow is easy and much like Twitter; it's just a matter ofclicking on a “+” plus sign.

Because Chatter is based on a flexible platform in which asocial media environment is the norm, you can collaborate over adesktop application and a mobile phone app, both of which are free.Currently, Chatter's mobile app is only available for the AppleiPhone, iPad or iPod Touch with iOS 4.0 or higher and BlackBerrydevices with BlackBerry 5 OS or higher.

Additional functionality makes the collaborative process eveneasier. For example, use of the “@” symbol in front of a person'sname will alert them to a particular post, regardless of whetherthat person is following that discussion thread. This allows peoplewithin the discussion to loop in others who have a specificknowledge or value.

If you're looking for a collaborative tool for use within youragency, Chatter doesn't have any cost of entry and might be justwhat you need. There is a lot of information on the Chatter.comwebsite, so spend an hour or so going through the website, watchingthe videos and understanding what you can and cannot do withit.

From a security perspective, if an employee leaves the companyfor whatever reason, his or her account can be deactivated. Thisprevents that person from accessing anything on the site (oncetheir company e-mail address has been deactivated) but leaves allof their previous posts and comments as part of the collectiveknowledge base.

Are you too big or too small?

There are several questions to ponder if you're consideringimplementing Chatter within your agency. First is a question aroundthe tipping point. What is the minimum number of people within acompany/organization that should be reached in order for it to makesense? If you are a 5- or 10-person agency, you probably don't needa collaboration tool. Gathering around the water cooler or atregular team meetings will most likely suffice.

If, on the other hand, you have several locations and a100-person staff, Chatter could be a great way to build a cohesiveworking team. Sharing a knowledge base of information andexperience across an agency that has grown through mergers andacquisitions, for example, might be just what is needed to geteveryone on the same page and heading in the same direction.

Also consider the frequently overlooked reality that sometimeswe are not “plugged in” to the Internet. Does Chatter work in adisconnected world? The fact that file collaboration is not basedon multiple people editing the same document, checking files outand in when edits are completed, makes a disconnected environmentless of a concern, I would imagine.

I can't say whether Chatter or any other collaborative tool issuitable for your agency. I will tell you that when I began lookinginto this, it definitely had a bit of the “coolness factor,” and Iregretted having too small of a company to make its use worthwhile.But in today's technology environment, coolness has little swaybecause it seems every day another technology comes to theforeground that's way cooler.

The business reason will always be the tipping point fordeciding on adopting a new technology.