Yammer, a Twitter for companies
After talking about Blellow, it is right to mention another microblogging service meant for business, but in this case addressed mainly to companies and organizations: Yammer.
Awarded by Techcrunch as best start-up of 2008, Yammer is very similar to Twitter, but with a different mission and a more structured business model.
Just like its predecessor and, even more, like the microblog we presented yesterday, the mechanism is still based on the frequency of updates by the users who, in this case, answer the question “What are you working on?”.
When a new user answers the question, a feed is created that is passed on to the colleagues who are subscribers, with whom it is possible to exchange opinions and answer problems using the usual system that we all know by now thanks to Twitter.
For every profile it is possible to insert information and details on your professional carrier, the projects you are working on, telephone contacts, etc.
In a way, Yammer replaces the company’s intranet and is similar to a wiki for problem solving or to have an easier communication, when it is not possible to use tools such as Skype, where the communication is not addressed to everybody but rather to a limited number of people, chosen by the user.
Paying a further monthly fee of $1 for every employee, the companies which have decided to adopt it can use a series of extra services such as the control of users, the cancellation of subscriptions and messages, the inclusion of the company’s brand, and above all the creation of a network reserved only to the employees through the authorization of specific IP addresses. This is exactly what the business model of social networks (designed by the same creators of Geni) is based upon, which would otherwise be completely free and with no income.
Yammer is available also as widget desktop and for iPhone and the more popular Blackberry, at least in the Italian business world. Its success is decreasing compared to when it was launched, when a lot of companies took part at once, reaching the number of 2.000 organizations and more than 10.000 users, but it is still quite a populous community.
Tags: microblogging