Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer • Hacker News Board

Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer

#91

Post by mangodrunk » Sat, Jun 16, 2012, 3:08 AM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #50

shangrila wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I suppose so. Thing is, I still feel like my initial assessment was right. It was a very poor fit the company I was at, not to mention it was a rather immature service at the time -- it felt like a half-baked Twitter clone and it made for a poor replacement for chat/email, especially in a small company. Today it seems like an almost completely different toolset with a lot more features. Looking at it now I think…

It came flying out of the gates, was always more like Facebook than Twitter and is targeted at pretty much all companies (I've worked at a 6 person company that loves it, a company that went from 10 to 100 employees that loves it and a company with 10s of 1000s of employees that loves it).

You've been at a lot of companies in a short amount of time. My experience has been that Yammer is not useful, for when the company was small and even less useful for a larger company. What exactly do you find useful that isn't covered by existing products?

Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer

#92

Post by mangodrunk » Sat, Jun 16, 2012, 3:12 AM UTC

alexscheelmeyer wrote: post #88

pbreit wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so I'm clear, you're comparing spending 4 years building an extremely successful business communications company to winning the lottery? Bernie Madoff? Casual gaming? Downvote.

You can compare things on many aspects. The Zynga/Madoff comparison was on trajectory - meteoric rise followed by sharp fall. Such a trajectory characterizes the scam or fad. My point is that Yammer is a fad, Madoff was a scam and Zynga is probably a bit of both. When a colleague of mine heard that Yammer was bought for 1 billion he exclaimed : "Oh, so THAT is what we should be doing - create a crappy product and get…

I agree with you and think you explained it well. There are also examples in MSFT acquisition history where there were bad purchases.

Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer

#93

Post by batista » Sat, Jun 16, 2012, 6:16 PM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #41

_pius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors should scream at stuff like this. There may be a time when they're completely incapable of making a key future acquisition because they overspent on crap like this. This feels a bit presumptuous to me. Beyond playing into sticker shock, you haven't provided any evidence that they overspent or neglected to investigate other options.

A "nice round figure" is suspicious. Shouldn't a well-researched investment cost an amount that sounds well-researched (i.e. a more precise figure and not something that seems rounded up to the nearest billion)? How about some brief brainstorming on what else they might have done... If I look at the rest of the company: shouldn't Microsoft be more interested in, say, shipping Windows 8 sooner and with more features?…

>A "nice round figure" is suspicious. Shouldn't a well-researched investment cost an amount that sounds well-researched (i.e. a more precise figure and not something that seems rounded up to the nearest billion)?

This sounds more or a fallacy and less of an argument to me.

Would a figure like $9,999,989,567 be better?

Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer

#94

Post by chii » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 5:21 AM UTC

planetguy wrote: post #48

makecheck wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "nice round figure" is suspicious. Shouldn't a well-researched investment cost an amount that sounds well-researched (i.e. a more precise figure and not something that seems rounded up to the nearest billion)? How about some brief brainstorming on what else they might have done... If I look at the rest of the company: shouldn't Microsoft be more interested in, say, shipping Windows 8 sooner and with more features?…

shouldn't Microsoft be more interested in, say, shipping Windows 8 sooner and with more features? They could pay engineers $200,000 a year (a very nice salary) and contract FIVE THOUSAND of them for a single year with that billion dollars Something something Mythical Man Month something something

> Something something Mythical Man Month something something

if you remember (or read the actual article), the mythical man month says nothing about the problem you quoted. It is often mistakenly taken out of context to mean that more people on a project doesn't make it faster.

Mythical man month actually says that a project already running late, won't be completed faster by adding more people at a later date, due to communication, and coordination problems. If you planned out the work for 5000 people (a hellova plan!), then this problem won't occur...in theory.

Re: Yammer agrees to Microsoft's $1 billion acquisition offer

#95

Post by maguay » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 6:02 AM UTC

bukl wrote: post #53

maguay wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very interesting. I'd never heard of Geni and the story behind Yammer.