Yammer is Microsoft's Instagram, and not just because of the same price tag.
As did Facebook, Microsoft is buying market traction, user engagement, brand equity, UX chops, and vision.
Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
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Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#22Microsoft buys Yammer, renames it SharePoint Cloud Server 2012 Mobile Enterprise Social Networking Edition
source (as best as I can tell): https://twitter.com/gsmith/status/213325584921665537
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#23"Sledgehammer spending" really bugs me. It says "we didn't exercise any brain cells to figure out what our purchase is actually worth, we're just throwing money at the wall because we think we can".
Investors should scream at stuff like this. How many things could millions of extra dollars buy? For one thing, maybe they could have acquired 4 or 5 additional companies, patents or other IP. If there was any chance that they could have done this for $500 million or $400 million or $50 million, that matters and should have been investigated thoroughly. Those saved millions of dollars can also be used to employ a bunch of people on projects for years (heck, sometimes entire applications are written by one or two people inside a company, and they might build something really cool that can be sold).
Microsoft has lots of money, sure. But this kind of spending isn't thinking long-term. Are they guaranteed to have this kind of money in a few years, even? There may be a time when they're completely incapable of making a key future acquisition because they overspent on crap like this.
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#24Smart buy.
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#25 It's like Facebook only with your grandmother standing behind you watching every word you type.
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#26there's always http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora for those seeking an alternative
I'm not sure Diaspora has any enterprise specific leanings, although - to be fair - I haven't spent as much time studying Diaspora as I probably should have.
OTOH, there is another Open Source (ALv2) "enterprise social networking" project out there, and we're always happy to have other folks get involved.
https://github.com/Fogbeam/Quoddy
So far we support features like:
A "facebook wall" like event stream for various event types, including status updates, calendar events (via iCal), business events (via our business event subscription engine), and external activities (via the activitystrea.ms protocol)
Friending / Following users
User Lists
User Groups (well, this is still being worked on)
"User Streams" (sort of like Circles in G+, but more flexible)
User profiles (this still needs a fair amount of love)
Status Updates (like "post to your wall")
ICal Subscriptions
Business Event Subscriptions (for SOA integration)
And we have a pile of other features planned or in progress. See:
http://code.google.com/p/quoddy/wiki/Roadmap
Disclaimer: I freely admit that we intend to make money from this initiative eventually, but the code is (and always will be) under a true OSS license (it's ALv2 now and probably always will be) and we don't ask for copyright assignment or anything. Hack on the project with us and hopefully we can hire you full-time when we (land a couple of paying customers | raise a round of funding | win the lottery).
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#27"Sledgehammer spending" really bugs me. It says "we didn't exercise any brain cells to figure out what our purchase is actually worth, we're just throwing money at the wall because we think we can". Investors should scream at stuff like this. How many things could millions of extra dollars buy? For one thing, maybe they could have acquired 4 or 5 additional companies, patents or other IP. If there was any chance that…
hey did this same thing with Aquantive (sp?), and shareholders didn't do jack. That acquisition had to be the biggest $6B wasted EVER.
Sadly, nothing you expect/want to happen will.
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#28I remember laughing at them when they launched at and won TC50. "Twitter for the enterprise! What a dumb idea." I'm laughing all the way to their bank now.
The tech is funny and most failed at this - we all know small batches or private twitters isn't that hard to do - they won with hustle and sales (and good tech probably).
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#29I remember laughing at them when they launched at and won TC50. "Twitter for the enterprise! What a dumb idea." I'm laughing all the way to their bank now.
I laughed when I read an article about a company ditching email to embrace Yammer. After taking a couple more looks at how it worked, I convinced my company to try it out - it's been fantastic about removing a littering of articles from our emails and putting them into Yammer where people can quickly ignore the noise and discuss the important stuff.
We've also found it a great way to let everyone know that you'll be out of the office, working from home, etc.
We probably aren't perfect in our execution, but it's been a fantastic tool so far.
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#30"Sledgehammer spending" really bugs me. It says "we didn't exercise any brain cells to figure out what our purchase is actually worth, we're just throwing money at the wall because we think we can". Investors should scream at stuff like this. How many things could millions of extra dollars buy? For one thing, maybe they could have acquired 4 or 5 additional companies, patents or other IP. If there was any chance that…
$1b is a steal for Yammer. I'm surprised Yammer would take that right now considering it's current valuation and how bright its prospects are. It has one of the most efficient B2B customer acquisition schemes. Even with the culture mis-match, I suspect this will be a good acquisition for MSFT.