In a move that reflects the retooling of its business-centric offerings, Salesforce. com - a high-profile San Francisco-based firm known for software it offers as a Web service - Wednesday introduced a set of software enhancements called 'Chatter,' which will be available in 2010, at a monthly charge of $50 per user.

Chatter, a business collaboration tool that functions on the lines of social-networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, will work with Salesforce's core customer management software, and will essentially display "profiles" of employees as well as posts about projects they are building up or customers they have visited.

In addition, Chatter, which will be available free of charge to all Salesforce. com customers, will allow users to receive updates about data stored in the system, like a customer-service incident or a modified spreadsheet or presentation.

Talking about the scope of Chatter at the Salesforce's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, the company's CEO Marc Benioff said: "I know more about these strangers on Facebook than I do about my own employees and what they're working on. I know when my friends went to the movies, but not when my VP of sales visited our top customer."

Undoubtedly, the introduction of Chatter highlights the fact that Salesforce - expected to report $1.3 billion yearly revenue - is looking to expand beyond its core business pertaining to customer management software.