Those who attended Dreamforce this year will agree: we were educated by Marc Benioff on the Social Enterprise so much so that we could probably add Dreamforce to our alma mater. The whole concept may have its roots in the 2009 release of salesforce.com’s Social Network for the Enterprise: Chatter. Transitioning to a Social Enterprise is something that’s now been added to most business agendas. In true form of practicing what one preaches, salesforce.com has powered Chatter to keep up with all the Social Web has to offer. With some of the key Winter '12 features revealed at the Dreamforce Day 1 keynote, it’s looking like Chatter will become the new base camp for most companies.

So what are the new features that will increase the collaboration and integration (and all those other words ending in ‘ion’s) within Chatter and the overall Salesforce platform?

1. Chatter Now - integrated instant messaging into the Salesforce platform. With this real-time chat, employees can see who’s in the app. Chat or even share your screen.
2. Workflow approvals - integrated Chatter approvals. From right inside your chatter feed, you can now streamline your work-flow processes. Managers can now approve things without leaving their Chatter feed.
3. Customer Groups - invite and bring your customers into a private chatter group (without letting them see other groups or objects in your org). Share files, proposals, meeting agendas and comments. Additionally, your customers can use Chatter mobile for the process.
4. In-line Filters - easily get to the feeds that matter most to you because now you won’t just be following the activity of your colleagues, you’ll be following pieces of data and business processes.
5. Chatter Connect - allows you to easily scale and collaborate using your existing tools like Microsoft Sharepoint.

With these features, Chatter has extended its capabilities to match other project management and collaboration tools - all while residing in the CRM tool. And with over 100,000 active Chatter networks and salesforce.com’s thought leadership around CRM, we're predicting a good year for the private social network.

How do you think Chatter compares with other collaborative enterprise tools and networks? Share your thoughts below!

Check out this demo of some of the Winter ‘12 features: