BroadVision's Free Business Social Media App Challenges Salesforce's Chatter: Page 2 of 2

Clearvale and Chatter are also joined by a company called Yammer in offering business social media services. Yammer serves enterprises ranging from oil company Chevron and consulting firm Deloitte to the start-up Groupon, which delivers location-based coupons to consumers' smartphones.

But like Chatter, Yammer is also limited to social networking within companies. With such tools, sales representatives can help each other cultivate sales leads and close deals, and other employees can solve customer service problems and spur innovation by collectively sharing ideas.

Clearvale Express offers that kind of collaboration but also integrates with Google Docs, which a growing number of businesses are using to create and share documents. Clearvale Enterprise can provide additional business services, including customized "widgets," which are small applications created to form specific enterprise functions.

BroadVision hopes to sell PaasPort to other telcos besides SoftBank, to create social media and other related collaboration services to sell to their business customers, Rodriguez says.

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