Micro-blogging for Business: Yammer
Everything is pointing towards writing a quick post about Yammer. It came up when I wrote about Twitter in my last post and when I was looking at my local St Albans blog I had a look at the blog roll and found someone else talking about it on the Business Two Zero blog.
Yammer is Twitter for business environment and it is virtually identical to twitter accept for the fact that your updates (Yams?) aren't public, but rather revealed only to those in a sepcific group (intended for your colleagues at work.)
My initial reaction is it is really good, I am a great fan of other business communication tools provided by 37Signals - and Yammer seems to fit in and create the same benefits as tools like basecamp.
I genuinely think that any application that creates visibility of what "people are up to" on a daily basis within one organisation, is a great thing. I think perhaps, also, it's low barrier to entry that is appealing for people who are not that in to technology (like instant messaging in this respect.) Ultimately, anything that makes it so that each perosn within a company knows more about what others are working on, the better.
;)
Whether Twitter could do the same job, I can't say, I think I may need to download the tweetdeck to find out....
Carl Knibbs
Reader Comments (10)
Hey Carl,
Thanks for the mention. I think use of twitter like services for microsharing based collaboration inside businesses is going to become a very important topic over the next couple of years. I was surprised there are 20+ products (and counting) already, as well as some really cool implementations, like the ESME project within the SAP Developer Network. Twitter is becoming more and more mainstream - watch out for an article in the Times Magazine on one of the early Saturdays in December.
And it's great to hear from a fellow St. Albans based blogger. We had our first meet up a few weeks ago - don't know when the next one is scheduled.
Hey David,
Nice to hear from you. It surprises me also that there are 20+ products. I may have a closer look at what they are. Not that they are addictive at all...
Best
Carl
TweetDeck rocks - makes Twittering and benefiting from it all the easier! And that from an eventually converted Twitter rejector.
I have downloaded the TweetDeck Ben, I am giving it a go, I'll let you know how I get on :-)
Yammer does NOT have the 140 character limitation Twitter has. We desperatly need a "TweetDeck" like application for Yammer to sort and minitor/trend hashtags, etc.
Add Yammer support for TweetDeck! Yes, yes, yes!
Thanks for the comment Robert, I agree entirely. The amount of apps supporting Twitter is part of the reason, probably, it is so successful. (I to am also a TweetDeck fan!)
Hi Carl!
Yammer is a great product that has ability to improve communications and create transparency by virtually making company’s structure flat. I work for LADevelopers Inc. (http://www.ladevelopers.com) a California based software development firm. We specialize in custom Yammer solutions for enterprise and know this product inside out. Please contact us if you need any help with it.
Thanks for the heads-up, I'll definitely keep in mind if I ever have any requirements. Carl
Yammer looks very interesting. It's a big step up from twitter where everyone's tweet ,business and personal , are put up all together, which makes it a bit confusing. I am getting that in yammer , you are only getting updates from people you work with, am I right?
Amy Cameron
BuildMySiteforFree.com
Thanks for the comment Amy,
Yep - Yammer is all about updates from colleagues and members of your team. You could, of-course, use Twitter for this but Yammer has certain features that make it more suitable for internal communications.
Kind regards,
Carl