TamTamy Blog

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.

A new social network for the business world has just been created. It is Blellow, a microblogging system similar to Twitter which, instead of asking its users the general question “What are you doing?”, asks “What are you working on?”

Although it is addressed mainly to freelancers, Blellow can easily be used also by companies. Its objective is to help people solve problems connected to their work with the collaboration of other users.

Through the creation of groups or, even better, by navigating in them or in the social network in general, companies can use the database of professionals it contains for recruiting.
It is a system that, in a way, is similar to the valid and reliable LinkedIn which is now, in my opinion, still one of the most useful and effective networks for business.

Together with this, just as it happens on Twitter, Blellow is used as a support when you have a problem working on a project. The number of users in the community can answer and help anybody who has already build his or her own network of contacts.

Finally, it is possible to post jobs, that is, create a sort of announcement with an optional sum offered, as in this case.
As I said at the beginning of this post, the service is mainly addressed to freelancers and, consequently, the kind of collaborations required usually refers to temporary or occasional jobs and not to open-ended hiring, also because this would change the essence of the project.
Blellow is not meant to be simply a site for job announcements, such as Monster, but rather it is a way to establish a network of professional contacts to interact with or rely on.

But still, once a certain harmony has been created with one or more contacts and their skills have been proved, companies can decide to establish with them a more durable relationship.

Twitter is a microblogging service you can use to express your status and send it to one or more contacts through the site itself, a text message, emails, etc.

Since it was invented and launched in 2006 by Obvious Corp. of San Francisco, different applications have been created, based on Twitter’s APIs, which enrich its features making use of, for example, Google’s maps or creating widget desktops.

Twitter is a social media that easily meets consumers’ needs, but this doesn’t mean that it is not suitable also for companies.

It can be useful to create buzz around some news, for instance, and let the word of mouth spread once that one or more persons have re-twitted the post (that is, they have published it again).
Many companies are already using Twitter to promote the contents of their blogs or to simply make their news known. In this case, even more than in those we have already mentioned, holding the role of the expert, and thus also of the influencer, will be fundamental if you want the people of your community to find your tweets interesting and, as a consequence, decide to follow your updates.

Even if apparently it does not look like that, Twitter is a really valid tool to reach potential customers. In fact, a debate is in progress in these days, following the recent statement of its founders, who are thinking about adding a pay service for those who make a commercial use of it. In this case, everybody (and every company) will probably decide whether to keep using the social network in its free version or to pay a subscription in exchange for some additional features, as mentioned in Twitter’s official blog.