Repeat after me: "I, state your name, will not twitter or tweet. I shall only yammer or yam." If you think you're confused put yourself in the shoes of my company's employees earlier this week.
We are by no means an "old" company - the average age is probably somewhere in the lower 30s - but the concept of "yammering" certainly seemed foreign to many of our employees.
During a professional development session earlier this week we were all instructed that we were about to embark on a 60-day pilot program within our company using twitter's business companion: Yammer.
Founded by former executives and early employees of PayPal, eGroups, eBay, and Tribe Yammer aims to loosen ties, kick off shoes, and let employees kick back in their chairs while answering one simple question: "What are you working on?"
I find it pleasantly ironic that the very day Justin posted his anti-Twitter article was when I was introduced to Twitter's sibling. In its most literal sense Yammer is Twitter for corporations.
Just as Twitter users can customize their homepages so too can companies on Yammer.
According to Yammer's homepage, more than 40,000 businesses worldwide use the program including Adobe, Hill & Knowlton, Starcom MediaVest Group, and Deloitte.
Below is an interview with Yammer CEO David Sacks. While the video is a tad outdated (September 2008) it does provide a solid outline of what the product is all about.
Yammer is available online in web browsers but also has a desktop application (my personal preference), an iPhone app (also handy), and more.
With all that said, I remain firm that the only Twitter interaction I will ever have is the occasional glance at what Charlie Weis is up to.
1 comment:
The coolest thing about the video is when the guy's phone starts ringing, it's clearly a Super Mario song.
This all sounds suspiciously like twitter for adults. Let's try and get some money out of this trend before people realize it's all fundamentally stupid...
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