An 'enterprise version of Twitter': That is how Yammer was introduced to the world -- or, more specifically, to folks in attendance at a conference in September 2008
An 'enterprise version of Twitter': That is how Yammer was introduced to the world -- or, more specifically, to folks in attendance at a conference in September 2008. 
In the 20 months since that very succinct introduction, this simple collaborative tool has been adopted by a surprisingly large number of companies (70,000 at last count), earned a serious amount of revenue, and raised around $15 million in funding. Not bad for something that wasn't even meant to go public.
It began with the genealogy-related social networking website Geni.com. The company's engineers created what is now Yammer for 'internal purposes', but their boss liked it so much that he decided to spread the word.
A wise move, clearly. If I were to explain how Yammer works to a former Luddite like, say, Salman Khan, I would describe it as 'Twitter for businesses'. If asked to explain further -- and one assumes Salman would ask -- I could add that while the question 'What are you doing?' explains the premise behind Twitter, the one defining Yammer's raison d'etre is, 'What are you working on?'
For employee-friendly companies, adopting it is a no-brainer because, as a microblogging service, it eschews the need for a detailed reply. More importantly, it keeps data private between employees holding valid email addresses.
From February this year, it enabled the building of communities -- making it possible for businesses to connect with, say, loyal customers. According to a report, a media company has already built a community for an advisory panel of 1,500 mothers.
An average user of Yammer could discuss problems at work, get replies from departments concerned (or a friendly CEO), upload family photographs and, in general, help a co-worker understand his or her job profile a lot better. It could also reveal who the more influential (or popular) people are, depending on their numbers of followers.
For customer-friendly companies willing to talk to customers openly, the benefits could be immense.
As for pricing, the basic service is free, with additional features offered for as little as $3-$5 per user, per month, with discounts for large firms.
Keeping all of this in mind, the most interesting piece of information I found was from web traffic reporting site Alexa, which informed me that 12.2 per cent of traffic to Yammer has been coming from India. It shows there may be hope for something relevant from our HR departments, yet.
-- Lindsay Pereira is Editor, MiD Day Online
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