Yammer

WHAT IS “YAMMER” ?

“ Yammer” is an enterprise social network service 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 micro blogging service and has evolved to become a full-fledged enterprise social network.

is almost exactly like , but for internal purposes. I'm pretty sure you have to have a company email address to sign up. And if you do, I highly suggest looking into this tool.

http://www.yammer.com

Why people love

1. It Cuts Out Senseless Email Chains

No need to reply all and clog up your inbox with email. Just post it on your internal Yammer network. Responses pile up just like facebook allowing you to move through the conversation in almost real time.

2. It Puts a Face with the Messaging

Just like Facebook does. Even just for selfish reasons, it makes you feel less like a work from home/coffee shop hermit and more like you are right there in the room with everyone else. And in just two weeks, you really feel like the team is a little closer because of it.

You can create a Poll and have the staff vote on it.

Example: You've been pushing for your staff to be more

involved with Twitter. The other day, You created a poll, everyone voted, and you had some real data that showed your company's twitter usage. Pretty cool I think.

-yeah "crowd sourcing" isn't the exact term - but the fact that you can tap into the group and generate some real data.

-you can have fun with it. You just posted a poll asking everyone whether or not.

3. Internal Crowdsourcing

When you share a file, it stores under a "File" tab. When you click on this tab, it takes you to an area where all the files are stored and folks can download the items.

Perfect for brainstorming documents, templates, reports, etc.

4. File Storage & Sharing

An hour ago you posted an update about needing blog content. Around the same time someone else posted a link to an event. A few minutes afterward a rep needed help with some content she was putting together.

Everything is hosted in a Yammer public

timeline/news feed - folks can move from conversation to conversation and respond accordingly. And it all stays put. And we can refer back to older conversations.

5. Multiple Conversations at Once

Upon first rolling this out to the team, I heard some grumbles of “another social network" and "another browser tab to keep open..." I totally get that.

Yammer has a Desktop app that runs on

Adobe Air, much like Tweetdeck. So you can keep your team's network open on your desktop throughout the day - no need for another browser tab.

6. Desktop and Mobile App

That's literally just the surface of the free version of the tool. Once you upgrade I'm sure the capabilities are greater. Plus, you can also create internal groups - for example, if you want to separate marketing, sales, etc.