Chatter was a free and seemingly pushed upgrade for every Salesforce client.

So I was perusing this comment section because we use Salesforce at work. There are a lot of assumptions about what the service does and does not do. At a glance, Chatter is just: 1- Allowing users to post 'working thoughts', like commentary, against any Salesforce object. For example, in a 24/7 tech support operation leaving comments there to alert future tech reps working on this issue. This is totally redundant because there a usually private/public commentary section defined in the object. This service is extending the ability to comment to all objects in the system. 2- Allows people to "follow" objects, whether that object is a client account, a user of the system, or a support ticket. Effectively, if you "follow" a user you will receive a notification of each action performed by that user. This is obviously where the whole privacy issue comes about. 3- Take up a large section at the top of each page. Bonus! You can "hide" chatter so it only takes up a ribbon-sized section *contentious sarcasm punctuation goes here*