Microsoft buys Yammer in $1.2bn cash deal The rumors were true: Microsoft has acquired business social networking firm Yammer in a 1.2bn cash deal announced on Monday. "The acquisition of Yammer adds best-in-class enterprise social networking to Microsoft’s growing portfolio of complementary cloud services; world-class talent that knows how to deliver rapid innovation …
I'd never dream of using Facebook for business purposes (in fact, our rules strictly forbid it) but I do see how a social network could have its uses, especially across large project teams and if integrated into the tools they use. I reckon this is a smart move by MSFT.
Now, to the business of convincing my employer to sign up to Yammer........
Current site has just started using it - so far, it seems pretty useful for linking up their worldwide operations (IT, Engineering, etc)...
On a side note, it looks a LOT like Facebook (feeds, groups, etc), but has Twitter features like mentions (using @), the ability to 'follow' people & hash tags
MSN Live, Google +, Yahoo chat, Q-Zone, Facebook, Twitter, Yammer(?), and all the others... (full list here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites)
Will there ever be an end?
It seems that every time 'a' large corporate mammoth eats one up only to shit it out in useless fashion gives way to another social service trying to fight its way to the top only to be swallowed by aforementioned.
I wonder what the future of social networking is. It all started for me with ICQ and now I don't even know where to 'socially' interact with people... Thank God it is almost Friday so I can interact with people the way the Goddess of Drink intended...
We had Yammer where I used to work. I think only about three people ever did more that a couple of posts. Horrible interface.
Skype is not perfect but it is a whole load more use than Yammer ever was.
I could never see any functionality in Yammer that was not already in use with other products. Yammer wasn't cheap either.
Another load of the MS dosh wasted on a pile of steaming dog turd.
Call me old fashioned but the first consideration in any acquisition is ROI, it would take the annual gross revenue of 6,666,666 users (assuming ZERO costs) to get an ROI, but nobody has ever heard of Yammer because its market penetration is nominal.
When I see a PUBLIC website that has a PRIVATE pagerank and Alexa rank, I always think they are hiding something, if nothing else these guide a true view of the popularity of the site. Compete.com shows their uniques at 63,669 down from a high of 102k per month last November. This makes it look like a site on the way OUT.
Yes they have a few corporate names like DHL and Cap Gemini listed as clients but how much are they paying per month and can this be replicated?
So that would suggest that Microsoft feels it could sell corporate microblogging to its own customers, fair enough but that raises another question, why not license the open source status.net and create their own platform, perhaps head hunt some people from Yammer to get a head start.
When you think that Microsoft’s core business is SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT and it can’t manage to write something as simple as this, then you have to question the management decision making.
$1.2bn, really!
If I were a Microsoft shareholder I would be pressuring Microsoft on the real ROI and reducing my position on their shares.
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