Microsoft Buys Yammer For $1.2 Billion 72
itwbennett writes "Confirming the rumor that emerged earlier this month, Microsoft has bought enterprise social networking software maker Yammer for $1.2 billion. Yammer will become part of Microsoft's Office Division." If you're not familiar with Yammer, it's essentially a messaging system that gives more control to administrators than does using an outside company's service, like AOL's AIM. "Enterprise social networking software," as Wikipedia explains it, means that Yammer "is used for private communication within organizations or between organizational members and pre-designated groups, making it an example of enterprise social software. ... Access to a Yammer network is determined by a user's Internet domain, so only those with appropriate email addresses may join their respective networks."
Re:Umm...so is this for organizations without Lync (Score:3, Interesting)
So what is Yammer for?
Maybe it's for helping bosses to feel less jealous of your Facebook account, so they don't have to demand its password?
*rimshot*
Re:Umm...so is this for organizations without Lync (Score:2, Interesting)
Probably for buying out and shutting down a potential competitor?
Or maybe they've got good Mac integration, since MS's Lync support on Mac is sort of half-there (it's basically just Communicator, there's no group support, etc.).
Why Yammer is Lame (Score:5, Interesting)
It is basically an internal Twitter for a company. At least for larger companies, you have upper management giving out tweets (or yams or whatever they want to call them) until they get bored with it. Low-level employees are afraid to write anything interesting out of a fear of accidentally writing something management will get upset about. So you get to see a few boring posting from upper management and that's about it.
Take away the fear and it would be a good internal tool for a company. However, there is no barrier to entry for competitors.
And that was my experience with Yammer.
Re:Why Yammer is Lame (Score:5, Interesting)
(Posting anon because I'm a coward.)
My company began using Yammer (more heavily) several months ago. I signed up during the initial "light usage" period and found it was just crap... I don't know that there's a way to unsubscribe from the company-wide feed, and I'd be seeing all kinds of garbage about things I didn't care about from people I didn't know. We've now got many sub-groups to which I'm subscribed, but even then it's annoying. The main driver for using Yammer was that we had (and are still having) massive problems with our Exchange servers delivering mail (which is a symptom of a much larger and more expensive security problem). It became the next-best way to communicate with Infrastructure people when shit was hitting the fan when our own infrastructure simply couldn't stand on its own.
The difference between Yammer and others is that it's "strongly encouraged" by my employer. I avoid using the desktop app, don't visit the website, but instead have selected group messages get forwarded to Google Chat. Otherwise the S/N ratio is just too much to bear. I don't want to be "friends" with these people -- they're co-workers, many of whom I can't stand. I don't want to be social. I don't want it to be a Facebook for Work. I'd avoid it altogether, if I could. Contrast that with FB where I (for the most part) enjoy reading things from people with whom I'm good friends, family, etc. People visit Facebook and Twitter (and others) because they want to and they like to. Employees go to Yammer because they HAVE to. Bleh.