So, have you discovered microblogging yet? Or, perhaps more importantly, have you
started using microblogs at work?
If you answered no to the second question, you may want to
check out Yammer. Yammer took the top
prize last week at TechCrunch50 (an annual conference showcasing new start-ups
hosted by the technology website TechCrunch).
The folks at TechCrunch describe Yammer as “Twitter with a business model.”
If you are not sure what a microblog is, or what Twitter is,
here is a brief word of explanation. Microblogs
are social software applications that allow you to broadcast brief text updates
(typically 140 characters or less) to anyone who chooses to subscribe or “follow”
your updates, or – if you need more security - to a select group of followers
chosen by you. The most popular and
famous microblogging tool is Twitter, however there are many others. Many of the popular social networking sites,
including Facebook and LinkedIn also contain microblogging tools called “status
updates.”
The basic purpose of a microblog is to inform your followers
of your current status – to answer the simple question: What are you doing
(right now)? For an even better
explanation, I highly recommend checking out this presentation by the folks
over at Common Craft. Although this
concept may sound odd or even like a colossal waste of time, an ever increasing
number of users are finding real value, even in the business world.
David Sacks, founder of Geni – a family tree website, also founded
Yammer. The technology behind Yammer was
first designed to support internal communications between developers at
Geni. They found it so successful, that
Sacks decided to start a separate company around the tool.
What makes Yammer so impressive, especially to the judges at
TechCrunch50, is the company’s specific focus on microblogging between employees
and the company’s potentially lucrative business model.
Twitter is free, and open to the public. Anyone can follow anyone (unless you specifically
choose to limit followers). In contrast,
Yammer is private. You must supply a
corporate email address to sign-up. And
then you can follow or be followed by only others with the same corporate email
domain, automatically keeping the conversations within a given company and
making it much more likely that a corporate IT department would approve of
using such a tool internally.
The question is not: “What are you doing?” but instead, “What
are you working on?” Employees in the
same organization can share their current status, post news, or find answers to
questions. That internal focus is also the source of
Yammer’s revenue. Yammer allows any
employee with a valid corporate email address to start a free network for a
company. But, if that company wants to
claim its name-sake network, it will cost them $1 per month per member. That fee buys the company administration privileges,
including the ability to delete users and messages, and to set password and
security rules.
According to TechCrunch, Yammer is definitely on to
something. 10,000 people and 2,000
organizations signed up on the first official day of its launch. Has your company
already signed up? Would corporate
communications in your organization benefit from a tool that made it easy for
employees to keep everyone else updated on their current work status? Let us know.
By the way, for those of you who answered yes to the questions at the start of this post,
especially to the second question, we want to hear your story. Please comment below.
-David