Chatter, a collaboration application for enterprise to connect and share information securely with people at work in real-time, was released by Salesforce last year. Just three months ago, a Facebook-like collaboration tool was designed to work with it. Seeing that Salesforce customers are positively embracing the updates, Chatter 2 is being launched formally  at the Oracle OpenWorld 2010 in San Francisco (see our live coverage of events here).

The productivity benefits of Chatter 2 reach are far-reaching as a cloud-based business tool compared to your traditional CRM features. It reduces the time and effort exerted on sending e-mails every time an update of a document is made. With Chatter, employees will automatically be updated should there be changes on files they choose to follow.  It is expected to be available to users within two months.

Feeds, profiles and the “following” feature sprung out of Facebook and Twitter formats, a fact not denied by Salesforce. But to separate it from your other social media networks, Chatter 2 is built and modified to effectively work with business. Cited below are some of the features of Chatter 2:

* Filters: Allows workers to filter the feed by groups, people and records they follow fir quick access.
* Topics: Think Twitter hashtags and the ability to follow the posts and comments related to a particular topic.
* Recommendations: Algorithms are smart enough to make recommendations about colleagues to follow or groups to join, based on common connections such as management hierarchy.
* Desktop: An Adobe Air desktop client allows for pop-up alerts from the Chatter feed without keeping a browser open.
* Analytics: Admins have the tools to create reports and dashboards on Chatter usage.
* Files: Employees can drag-and-drop files – from documents and presentations to photos and other media files – directly into Chatter.
* Search: A toolbar that scans feeds, files, updates or comments in real time for an update.
* E-mail digest: Been away for the day? A daily or weekly update will provide users with a recap of the latest posts from their feeds.
* Chatter Central: a new Chatter home page where users can find all of the Chatter related information they need.

Upgrade to Chatter 2 will be free. If you want to use Chatter collaboration tools minus the Salesforce tools, you can obtain a license at $15 per month per user.