Yammer: Why did it win the TC50?
Yammer won the TC50 prize for most innovative startup. I was the Accenture employee #30 to join that network.
Yammer seems promising in the sense that simplifies interaction among peers within a “firewalled” environment.
Yammer, however lacks the staying power to enter the corporate environment. Corporations will not be willing to give up their data to third party managed services that do not comply with strict security regulations.
Moreover, the data would remain in Yammer’s DB and Corporations will be exposed to potentially flimsy security policies. This is not a winning solution to bring Twitter style conversations to within the firewall.
There are other options, of course. One of them is wordpress’ prologue. The theme for wordpress that allows folks to create twitter-like groups for micro blogging is open source and can be installed and secured within the firewall. The data remains secure and the exposure is minimized.
As of yesterday, there were already 17 new members in the Accenture Yammer network.
Can it be that a grass roots bottom-up movement/application such as Yammer conquers corporate and drives adoption of micro blogging across the corporations? Or is Yammer doomed to failure due to the easy-to-replicate-internally issue?
3 Comments
Antonio Altamirano on October 29th, 2008
I think the cross over from super-hyped community-driven Twitter to a more conservative (and restrictive) corporate environment is like flying a kite with 3-foot long rope. Twitter thrives due to the blend of all kinds of people and backgrounds in a melting pot ruled by creative chaos.
Yammer (and other similar apps — present.ly) need to tailor the offering better to make *work* exiting and fluid. So that using Yammer in your iPhone while walking down the road is not a chore but a treat.
I think services like these will thrive when the corporate culture evolves. That eventually will happen but not overnight.
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Byron on October 29th, 2008
I think Yammer fits well in small workgroups, where no complex coordination is needed.
Currently I use Yammer for work coordination in a small group and everything is going fine. Of course we still use regular email for detailed especifications, file sending, etc.
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Allan on October 24th, 2008
Although easy to duplicate, the scaling that Yammer addresses by providing this service exclusively to a lot of enterprises will give it a chance to succeed. It’s not that easy to copy the first mover - looks easy but is not.
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