Fresno Pacific University in California is slowly rolling out Salesforce.com's (NYSE: CRM) Chatter social platform on a department-by-department basis to facilitate recruitment efforts. The incremental deployment is not a function of budget constraints, but rather a strategy to ensure that users are sufficiently prepared to use the tool so there will be effective adoption, reports David F. Carr at InformationWeek.

Experts have warned that throwing social media at users too quickly can discourage adoption because there may not be adequate content to spark their interest.

Salesforce introduced the commercial version of Chatter last summer, and it claims more than 80,000 users at this point. Its core appeal is its ability to integrate with the Salesforce application environment, but it is also used outside of sales. The social platform has enabled users to decrease meetings by 28 percent on average, according to a user survey by the company. 

For Jonathan Maher, the university's institutional research data analyst, Chatter is primarily about improving communication. It is also useful in reducing group email threads that result from indiscriminate use of the "Reply to All" button. The social platform lets employees follow conversations and people based on their interest level. If they have a strong interest, they can receive email notifications about conversations, and if they have less interest they can just check in on conversations.

"What I see is that there is definitely less forced communication, where everyone gets something shoved down their throat," Maher said.

For more:
- see David F. Carr's article at InformationWeek

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