Salesforce. com's customer-service platform, Service Cloud - which already helps clients keep checks on Facebook, Blogger, and Web forums - will soon be integrated with the popular messaging service Twitter.

The January-launched Service Cloud merges concepts like social networking, online customer communities, knowledge base information, and making cloud services-made data available to e-mail, phone and chat-based customer service providers.

With the new application - Salesforce CRM for Twitter - to be added to its "app exchange," Salesforce clients who use its Service Cloud product would be able to keep more effective tabs on Twitter for customer service purposes. The application would facilitate the scrutiny of Twitter messages, summation of rejoinders and chats around those messages, and response to queries and complaints.

Salesforce is using the beta period to polish up the presentation as well as feel of the integration, which has been described by an industry observer as "incremental" but "interesting."

The new capability has been demonstrated by Salesforce to show how it would help a telecom provider spot and track discussions - with the direct use of Twitter, the integration allows pertinent Twitter conversations to be pulled into the Service Cloud, thereby allowing users to respond directly!