Salesforce.com announced last week that it was purchasing real-time communications vendor Dimdim for $31 million. The purchase gives Salesforce video conferencing, presence awareness and instant messaging, and provides a way for it to build on its Chatter collaboration and communications platform for a relatively small investment, without having to develop these capabilities itself.

What's interesting is that in the press release announcing the deal, Salesforce framed it in terms of "mirroring the Facebook model." It wants companies to see this as a way to socialize behind the firewall, meaning it's making a pure Enterprise 2.0 play. In fact, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff specifically mentioned Facebook in the announcement saying, "The acquisition of Dimdim will help salesforce.com deliver to the enterprise the same integrated collaboration and communication experience that made Facebook the world's most popular Internet site."

Chatter, on the other hand, is simple micro-blogging, and as such a one-dimensional approach to the social enterprise. This purchase provides a way to expand that initial foray into a more fully functional Enterprise 2.0 suite with potentially positive implications for Salesforce users and Force.com developers.

Forrester's TJ Keitt's blogged that the Dimdim site was shut down shortly after the announcement and existing customers were told there would be no renewals. Regardless of the way Salesforce took over, Keitt says it's a smart move and will drive more Enterprise 2.0 social services such as profiles, groups and file sharing. He says this gives platform developers building on top of the Force.com platform the ability to access these services natively and he believes that could help create powerful, integrated, socially-aware applications.

It's always hard to know how well a company can integrate another's technology, but Salesforce clearly has a good track record in this regard. The goal of making the platform more social is certainly a positive one and we will see if the deal delivers the social capabilities that Salesforce desires.

For more information:
- see the Salesforce.com press release

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