Yammer: internal microblogging = virtual water-cooler?

An article by Tabish Hasan    4 Comments

Our company recently started to use Yammer as an internal communications tool.  For those that aren’t familiar with Yammer, it’s sometimes referred to as….. “it’s like twitter but for work”.  It allows employees to send updates knows as “yams” (kinda like tweets) to everyone else in the company.  Since most of our work is done virtually, an application that fosters communication was greatly needed.  We’ve been using it for the past few weeks and I’m already convinced that this tool, if used correctly, can really benefit the company.

It’s not meant to eliminate emails, but it greatly reduces the need for them. For example, is it really necessary to send an email to all the executives when you had a good meeting with a client? For stuff like that, I think it’s better for the employee to send out a Yam.  Most of us are already bombarded with enough emails as it is.

I kind of think of Yammer like a virtual water-cooler  in a typical office scenario. It’s where any can gather around and share any thought they have with whoever wants to listen.  Similar to around a water-cooler, employees wouldn’t want to say anything that they wouldn’t want the whole company to know. (As most of you know, office gossip around the water-cooler or coffee maker spreads very quickly.)

So far, my only gripe with yammer has been that there’s no Windows Mobile app for it yet. There’s some 3rd-party firm with a beta version, but it’s having technical issues and not ready for prime-time yet.  I’m looking forward to Yammer releasing a Win Mobile version. They already released the blackberry and iphone versions, so my HTC Touch Pro is feeling kind of left out.