Yammer, the acquisition closing, and my initial impressions

The Yammer acquisition is a major investment for Microsoft and will have significant benefit for our Enterprise customers as Yammer is the leading social network for enterprises.  The acquisition officially closed earlier this week and Yammer has officially become part of the Office Division.  The official announcement can be found on the Microsoft blog:
https://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/07/19/microsoft-welcomes-yammer-to-the-office-division.aspx

A few weeks ago, prior to the acquisition closing, I was invited by some Product Group folks in Redmond (no, not the actual Yammer folks, a different product group) to join in.  I joined and initially started using the web-based portal.  This certainly seems like the “water cooler” application where the social consciousness of the company can be shared internally which seems almost too good to be true.  Working for a company that vehemently protects its intellectual property yet now being able to share internally your thoughts on what’s going on with you and on the company is a breath of fresh air for many, given the traffic I’m seeing on it.

As the majority of my day-to-day applications are rich applications, rather than being web based, I decided to take the plunge and install the Yammer desktop app.  This is where I’ve spent most of my time looking at Yammer as I actually value rich applications as opposed to those that are web-based.  This really seems like a nice tool with the possible exception of it being Adobe Air-based (I’d just uninstalled Adobe Air a short while ago when I stopped using a Twitter app that required it.)  Take a look at the interface:

image

It’s pretty easy to see how this application from a web-based perspective and a rich application perspective can be very useful, and I’ve just started exploring.  Definitely worth a look if you’re not familiar with it.

Enjoy!