Salesforce Chatter just went live to all customers earlier today, but already it is being attacked from below by smaller social CRM players. Taking a page from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s own playbook of getting attention by going after larger incumbents, Bantam Live CEO John Rourke likens Chatter to lipstick on a pig. The pig in question is the underlying Salesforce app which he describes as having “the interface only the mother of a database technician could love.”
Now that he’s got your attention, what Rourke really wants to tell you is that Bantam Live is the social CRM for small businesses. Bantam Live launched last year at one of our Realtime Crunchups, and it came out of beta last February. A couple weeks ago, I got him on video talking about his approach to social CRM and how he positions Bantam Live against the Salesforce juggernaut. He also gave me a demo of his social enterprise app. (Watch the videos after the jump).