Salesforce.com  has announced the general availability of Salesforce Chatter, the company’s cloud-based enterprise "social collaboration" app and platform.

Chatter was introduced in November, launched in private beta back in February to 100 companies, and eventually expanded to over 5,000 customers. 

"Salesforce Chatter is the most exciting thing I’ve worked on in my career," says Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "Delivering Chatter is a seminal moment and one that marks the arrival of Cloud 2."

A representative for Salesforce once called Chatter "Facebook for the Enterprise."In April, I spoke with Kraig Swensrud, senior vice president, product marketing, who told me, "Chatter is at the center of our entire strategy moving forward."

Naturally, this would then mark a very significant day for the company.

There is a new Chatter license, which Salesforce says unlocks the market potential for its technologies to be used by every customer employee. Features include:

– Profiles
– Status Updates
–  Real-Time Feeds
– Content and File-Sharing
– Groups
– Ideas
– Read-only Access to Accounts and Contacts
– Limited Access to the Force.com Enterprise Cloud Computing Platform

Salesforce Chatter is free with all paying user licenses of Salesforce CRM and Force.com. Chatter-only user licenses are available for customers using Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition or Unlimited Edition for $15 per user, per month.