Monthly Archives: March 2012

Sharing Chatter Posts: who gets credit?

Salesforce recently added a new feature to Chatter that allows users to re-share posts with their followers, with a group, or via link.  I am SUPER thrilled for this ability — it has been really helpful to highlight, share, and/or amplify information.  For instance, if I shared a post from Jim Halpert it would look like this:

Users can click on “originally posted” to view the author’s original post

Another feature simultaneously released is “Chatter Influence,” an out-of-the-box feature that basically assigns each user in a Chatter organization an influence ‘score’ based on a secret algorithm around how frequently you share information that people like or comment on.  For example, Jim Halpert is considered an “Active Influencer” in his org:



So here is my question: if I share a colleague’s post, and people like and/or comment on the post that I share (rather than the original post), who gets the influence “credit” — the original author or the re-sharer? (I threw this out to Salesforce, who, as usual, responded quickly and they are looking into it.)

  • Philosophically, who really should get the credit – the original author? The one who shared?  Maybe both? Ultimately if the shared post gets more attention, it’s probably because the original author may not have as large of a personal following, or they didn’t know to share with a specific group in order to reach a larger audience. In this case the post had much less influence before it was shared, but if the post had never existed it would carry no influence at all… 
So maybe what it comes down to is the question of assigning influence to how users communicate rather than what they communicate; it seems like what = content = value.  How is also an important consideration, so maybe a combination of “what” (content) and “how” (audience navigation) yield the most accurate influence score – but how should they be weighted? 
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Sharing Chatter Posts w/ Private Groups: should the author be notified?

Last week I wanted to re-share a Chatter post with a private group (to suggest that the post’s author needed a response) but I hesitated because I didn’t want the author to know that I had shared their post.  I performed a quick test in my demo org and learned that the original author will not receive a notification if their post is shared with a private group of which they are not a member, which was pleasantly surprising. I tweeted @Salesforce positively acknowledging the noted detail, and yesterday a couple of Chatter product managers asked me this:


It’s an interesting question and I think the answer is entirely dependent on the context. (Also, would I know which group my post was shared with, or just that it had been shared with a private group?)

Consider these scenarios:
  • I post to Chatter with an idea about increasing productivity. If I received a notification that my post had been shared with the “Leadership Team” — a private group that I cannot view — I would probably feel good because someone thought enough of my idea to share it with my company’s leadership. 
  • I post to Chatter about X and receive a notification that my post has been shared with the Human Resources private group. That might make me nervous — what am I saying that demands HR’s attention?  Are they going to get in touch with me? 
Ultimately: if I want to reference a user’s post in a private group I will find a way to do so discreetly (i.e. in a way that does not include notifying the author) and I’m not really sure of the value of notifying the author.  Maybe including an option to notify the author would be appropriate, depending on what the share-r intends to accomplish….  As an end user, I’d rather not know if my post is shared w/ a private group because then I would just wonder, perhaps unnecessarily.  If someone wants to respond to me, they will.

Chatter Much?

If you know me, or even talked to me in the past couple of years, chances are you are acutely aware of how passionately I study social behavior, particularly within business & organizational structures. As an avid user and administrator of salesforce.com for ~6 years now, my exploration of this world focuses mostly on Salesforce Chatter, a product that provides a solid foundation for an enterprise social network (ESN).
I ♥ Chatter.
Web-based social networks are increasingly becoming a fundamental aspect of our personal lives & the modern workforce.  It is so important for organizations to maintain an active social foundation for both internal and external communication, and this is what I tend to never shut up about.  So more on that later.
That’s enough background to set up the following interaction that cracked me up.  I was telling my man about Giada De Laurentiis’ recent Twitter fail and sent him this picture of Giada to remind him of who she is:
… and 10 minutes later he sent me this in return:
… I’ll take it. =)
You know, at the end of the day people aren’t going to participate in communities unless there’s a driving reason, and they will be much more likely to be active members if they are excited.  So come, one and all, to my fountain of community excitement — there’s enough to go around. 😉