Yammer was one of the first enterprise microblogging
tools, and it continues to add features to extend the original concept of
Twitter into an enterprise business application. A while back, I wrote about
one case example, Implementing Enterprise Micro-messaging with Yammer at Océ., Océ
is still an active user of Yammer. I was pleased to recently speak with
Yammer’s VP of Marketing, Steve Apfelberg, about their capabilities and latest developments. Steve said that many of their new
features came from customer input. Here is a sample screen.
We began with an overview of some of the ways Yammer
has extended the functionality of microblogging beyond Twitter to better serve
business needs. First, they have not placed a 140 character limit on updates,
or Yams, as they call them. There is a suggestion to keep things crisp but many
business messages require more than 140 characters. I agree and have
reluctantly avoided Twitter at times for this reason when it would have served
a good purpose.
Yammer provides auto updates or Yams based on user
actions such as joining a group or adjusting an org chart. There is two-way email integration. Steve said they
did this since some people still live within email. You get email notifications
if you want and can post to Yammer from email.
Now Yammer Communities enables companies to create a new
type of Yammer network that is not restricted to a common email domain. The
Communities option provides companies with a secure, private, and separate
space to communicate with their external business contacts. Membership,
messages and other data in the Community are completely separate from
membership, messages and data in the parent company network; users must toggle
between networks to access these separate Community networks. It has all
the features of the traditional or “canonical” instance of Yammer. People
within a company can use both. Steve gave the example of the Dana Farber Cancer
Institute in Boston that has used Yammer Communities to allow newly diagnosed
cancer patients to communicate with cancer survivors in a secure manner.
Yammer provides both a free version and premium paid
versions with expanded features. More than 10,000 companies and organizations created new Yammer networks
in Q1 2010, bringing the total to more than 70,000. More than 70% of Fortune
500 companies are using Yammer and there are over 800,000 users. This is a
testimony to the power of microblogging and to what Yammer brings to this
capability.
It's cool when tool makers listen to feedback to make their product even just a little bit better. Sometimes it's not just about research but knowing how the users themselves think. You might think a program is a good idea but the rest of the population may think it's rubbish.
Posted by: Michelle | Online Poster Printing | May 28, 2010 at 03:52 AM