Yammer

Yammer is an enterprise social network service that was launched in September 2008. Unlike Twitter, which is used for broadcasting messages to the public, Yammer is used for private communication within organizations or between organizational members and pre-designated groups, making it an example of enterprise social software. Yammer originally launched as an enterprise microblogging service and has evolved to become a fully-fledged enterprise social network.

Access to a Yammer network is determined by a user's Internet domain, so only those with appropriate email addresses may join their respective networks.

According to TechCrunch in September 2010, the service is being used by more than one million users and 80,000 companies worldwide, including 80% of the Fortune 500. In a late April 2010 interview, Yammer CEO David Sacks said that Yammer revenue was doubling every quarter, but would not disclose 2009 revenue beyond describing it as "seven figures". Sacks also said that 70% of Fortune 500 companies were using Yammer at that time.

Awards and nominations

On September 10, 2008, Yammer won TechCrunch50. Other final jury selections included Atmosphir, Fitbit, GoodGuide, Grockit and Swype.

Yammer was nominated (but did not win) in the Best Enterprise Startup and Best New Startup categories in The Crunchies 2008, a competition and awards ceremony put on by TechCrunch.

Yammer was named one of the 2009 InformationWeek Startup 50: Business Technology Companies To Watch.

In May 2010, Yammer was named as one of the 122 "Hottest Companies in San Francisco" by California-based Lead411 in the launch announcement of that list. The 122 winners were chosen from over 900, and were based on the following criteria: being within the San Francisco Bay Area; having less than $100 million in annual revenue; and having either 100% increase in revenue over the last 3 years, $5 million in funding in the past 2 years, or both 2× traffic gain the past 12 months and over one million visitors per month.

Pricing

Yammer operates as a freemium, offering a basic free service as well as a premium version of the service at $5/user/month. The premium service provides administrative controls, enhanced security tools, data export, keyword monitoring, directory integration, network analytics, SharePoint integration, a dedicated Customer Success Manager, customization, among other features. Yammer also offers discounts for large organizations as well as education and nonprofit organizations.

According to the company, users include Barclaycard, Cisco, Molson Coors, Diageo, Groupon, AAA, Cargill, Valtech, Adobe, AMD, Aricent, Intuit, the BBC, Capgemini, Deloitte Digital Australia, Fox International Channels, Logica, LG Electronics, Mabe_Mexico, Nationwide, Starcom Mediavest Group, ServiceMaster, Suncorp, SunGard, Telefonica, Honeywell, National Oilwell Varco and Palo Alto Software.

Features

In addition to standard microblogging features like posting messages, addressing messages and following people, Yammer offers the following enterprise social networking features:

Replies and threaded conversations

Tags, now known as Topics

Public and private groups within the network

Communities that are separate networks, allowing users to connect with people outside of their organization

File and photo attachments

Events, polls, and questions applications

Robust direct messaging to multiple recipients

Presence so you can see who is online now

Sending and receiving messages via IM, SMS and Email

Twitter integration

Microsoft SharePoint integration

iPhone, iPod touch, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile clients

Security features like removing users who no longer work at the company, IP restrictions, etc.

Network color and logo customization

Social bookmarking

A RESTful API (uses OAuth for authentication)

SSL

History

On September 8, 2008, Yammer launched at the TechCrunch50 conference. Reporting from the conference, Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch described Yammer as "an enterprise version of Twitter":

"David Sacks, the founder of genealogy site Geni, just launched a new company called Yammer on stage at TechCrunch50. Yammer is an enterprise version of Twitter. If Twitter asks: “What Are You Doing?”, Yammer asks: “What Are You Working On?” Engineers at Geni created Yammer internally for the company’s own purposes, but Sacks liked it so much he decided to spin it off as its own company. He explains: 'The purpose is to allow co-workers to share status updates. You post updates on what you are working on. You can post news, links, ask questions, and get answers for people in your company. You can see the most prolific people and the most followed people. It is a good way to discover who is the most influential in your company.'

In February 2010, the company launched "communities", which are networks for which access is not restricted by domain, thus allowing businesses to connect to groups such as customers, partners, and suppliers.

In September 2010, Yammer 2.0 was launched, and aimed at being a more fully featured social network for the enterprise. The new version of Yammer is designed to be more than a communications platform and it has been described as a Facebook for business.

Some of the new features include:

Events: Co-workers within the enterprise are invited to company or group events with responses tracked. Users have the ability to download events information directly into Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar.

Links: Employees have the ability to share URLs with co-workers in a form that displays videos and images within the conversation.