Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Buy Yammer?
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft seems to have a pocketful of billions sitting around. First Skype, now Yammer – an enterprise social network service launched back in September 2008 that looks almost like Facebook minus the title bars. According to Bloomberg, the deal could reach up to a billion dollars. To date, Yammer claims 200,000 companies which include more than 400 of the 500 Fortune companies. One reason for the purchase may stem from their social-like Sharepoint platform which has been a lost cause to solutions by Salesforce.com and Oracle."
My employer tried Yammer, then installed Sharepoint. Nobody used Yammer after Sharepoint became available, and not many use Sharepoint now. People don't tend to post drivel about work like they do about their personal lives.
I think part of it is:
- Startup comes up with interesting idea, sees growth in business.
- Big Corp sees startup's success and thinks "I want a piece of that action."
- Big Corp buys Startup.
- Big Corp sees growth due to Startup.
So far so good, until either:
- Big Corp decides to alter Startup to "make it better fit into our corporate structure."
- Users flee Startup as it looks like boring Big Corp site.
- Big Corp scratches head in wonderment as to why Startup is a failure, kills Startup.
- Big Corp looks for another startup to buy.
Or:
- Big Corp doesn't give Startup resources/leeway to grow.
- Startup is overtaken by other startups.
- Big Corp scratches head in wonderment as to why Startup is a failure, kills Startup.
- Big Corp looks for another startup to buy.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Contrary to the claim of the blurb, Salesforce Chatter integrates into Sharepoint. I am a Salesforce emp and we have plenty of customer references I'd be happy to bring out.
The whole point of enterprise social platforms is too TRY to get people to post drivel about work.
When you are a Fortune 500 company with hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide, who operate in silos and rarely communicate among eachother, communication platforms can be a huge boon to your company. They let people informally share knowledge that can directly impact your bottom line. If an employee in NYC has a non-time-sensitive issue with an application, maybe instead of calling the company help desk they can just post a question in a forum, and someone else in Malaysia who is just getting their morning coffee takes 5 seconds to answer it - boom, the person got their answer faster, and with less stress, and you just saved money. The multiplicative effect of that, if properly embraced, can be enormous.
The whole problem with these platforms, however, is they are usually not implemented properly. You can't just throw up a social platform on the intranet portal and expect 10/20/30 years of in-grained culture to change - there has to be initiatives driven from the top down to encourage employees to use the platform and educate them on why it is better both for them and the company.