It’s official: “Salesforce Chatter accelerates the demise of Microsoft SharePoint and IBM Lotus” – so claim’s salesforce.com in their press release of 17th February 2010.

The SaaS leader buys time with the launch of this beta that offers real-time feeds from consumer services “Facebook, Twitter, and Google Buzz” (though, in a ZDNet post, this is clarified by salesforce.com: “Chatter at this time doesn’t integrate with Google Buzz.  Google Buzz was used in the press release as an example of a popular social consumer network.”)

There will be 100 companies in this private beta program, including Reed Exhibitions, Schumacher Group, and TransUnion.  Chatter should be delivered sometime in 2010.

For more on Chatter see my earlier post “You won’t be able to get too much Chatter.”