Chatter the "Facebook for businesses."

Salesforce.com is opening its free social-networking service for businesses.
The service is called Chatter, and it works a lot like Facebook for businesses. Employees will be able to sign up with a company e-mail account and create a profile like they do on Facebook, then can use the space to exchange messages and share files.

Chatter has been available to paying Salesforce customers since July, but in December the company announced it would open it up to any business users at no charge, and that transition kicks in on Monday. Salesforce hopes the free service will convince businesses to its full suite of CRM and other business services.

Chatter works on PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, and BlackBerry devices, with plans for an Android application later this year. Users can update their status messages for other followers to see, but for now, Salesforce.com isn't building in instant messaging.