Kudos to them for recognizing the value of an internal tool and spinning it off. Their original idea, Geni, seems to be languishing(unsurprisingly-how many mentally ill second cousins once-removed does it take to ruin a social network?).
Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
51–60 of 95 posts
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#52"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…
The question is more, "Can Microsoft extract more than 1 billion (or whatever the exact purchase price is) + return on investment from this purchase?"
If they have ~1 million paying users, and have anywhere close to 3/user (considering some are on group licenses, some are in the 15/mo range), that's 36 million in revenue a year, with a potential total of much more.
Microsoft must believe they can grow the user base, be able to integrate it with existing products (sharepoint) that will drive upgrades, and extract more than a billion dollars of value.
In this case, I wouldn't bet against them.
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#53It's like Facebook only with your grandmother standing behind you watching every word you type.
Actually, that's how Facebook already is ... with your literal grandmother watching everything you post.
Actually that describes the original startup that Yammer was spun out of: a spam-heavy social network called Geni, that tries to turn a family tree int a social network, and brings not only your grandmother, but every other crazy distant relative out of the woodwork.
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#54Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#55I heard Yammer has no hope of revenue ever and that this is obviously a talent acquisition.
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#56Yammer 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.
I think Facebook bought Instagram because they were afraid of its fast growth and what it could become in the future.
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#57"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…
The question is more, "Can Microsoft extract more than 1 billion (or whatever the exact purchase price is) + return on investment from this purchase?" If they have ~1 million paying users, and have anywhere close to 3/user (considering some are on group licenses, some are in the 15/mo range), that's 36 million in revenue a year, with a potential total of much more. Microsoft must believe they can grow the user base,…
You can bet that they'll integrate this with SharePoint. I don't necessarily think direct revenues from Yammer had anything to do with the decision. This isn't the first aquisition they've done this with - see Fast Search And Transfer a couple of years ago. The SharePoint product line generates huge revenues for Microsoft, so they could easily justify spending a lot of money on something like this.
So now we'll have another huge addition to this already humongous monstrosity. But I guess it's a good thing for Microsoft if they want to grow SharePoint into a SAP-like product that is everywhere and impossible to get rid of. Seems like a sensible purchase to me, although at a somewhat high cost. I think they paid 200MM for FAST a couple of years ago, for advanced search features.
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#58"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…
Yup.
Especially when you consider that MS lost a lot of good talent by putting some hiring on hold and especially by forgoing nearly all raises, bonuses, and promotions for about 2 years during the recent economic downturn. Even while they had tens of billions of dollars in the bank. They should have used that war chest to project their strength while everyone else was showing their weakness. Instead they made a cowardly choice and drove a lot of good developers elsewhere.
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#59From actual usage of Yammer, have heard of many companies where it is in use but the user engagement is really low. Can anyone using it comment on any success stories or failures of using Yammer internally? What has worked and what not?
Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer
#60I 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 company where I work tried to use Yammer in 2009, and it seemed like a good idea implemented very poorly back then. It was just the engineering division with about 40 people. Tech issues quickly went to email threads where you could deal with code, screenshots etc. It mostly got used as an IRC channel to post WFH messages. But what caused their downfall for us was the constant updates (using AIR--argh) that broke the client, moved buttons around, etc. One by one, people just didn't update, then just removed it (AIR too). Since I hadn't heard much buzz about them until now, I thought that happened to everyone and they died a slow death.