I am following TechCrunch50 (TC50), the event for startups put on by popular tech blog TechCrunch. A friend of mine, Ryan Coleman , engaged me in discussion about Yammer.com by asking me what I thought of it.
From the Yammer launch press release :”Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: “What are you working on?”Yammer was founded by former PayPal COO David O. Sacks and officially launched on September 8, 2008. Yammer’s management team includes seasoned industry veterans drawn from the ranks of PayPal, eBay, eGroups, Tribe, and other leaders in the software industry.”I have been using Twitter for over a month now. At first I didn’t get the hype, but now I love it and use it both to keep Realvibez in touch with super fans and for me to personally interact with some great people, like Om Malik from GigaOm. Yammer takes this new micro-blogging trend, similar to sending an SMS to friends who subscribed, and adapts it beautifully for businesses of all sizes. I intend to implement it in our venture as soon as possible and here’s why:Many companies use IM clients to allow employees to communicate but that is mainly one-to-one communication and there is no archiving. Yammer improves efficiency and productivity because:
- one-to-many communication - Want to know who is working on a specific project or the status of it? Just post and whoever knows the answer will respond.
- archiving - Email is not required for everything and IM offers no archiving . Yammer allows you to archive conversations.
- follow terms - Working on a project involving Product X, subscribe to all posts about ‘Product X’ and stay in the loop without having to call or email every part of the team (marketing, sales, IT, etc.)
- understand upper management - If you want to know what upper management is thinking about or working on, just ‘follow’ them. Might get some great book recommendations or a heads up on new initiatives before that meeting.
- less meetings - Companies love to have meetings for things as simple as status reports and ideas. How about virtual updates and idea suggestions? Less meetings = Saved money and increased productivity.
Check out the demo video Ryan asked me if I thought it would be adopted easily, pointing out that “those who are collecting a paycheck for lack of better terms will A) not adopt it and B) have their spot blown up because you can see where work stops rather than flows. I see a big HR push needed to get it used company wide.” My response was:”I see this being more than HR, this is a mandate that has to come from the CEO.We may think that people will push back but look at what the Zappos CEO has achieved with twitter usage in his company by leading by example.If this can truly benefit a company and an employee pushes back, it means that they are wrong for the company and HR hired for skills instead of attitude.People with the right attitude for the company will embrace it easily.”Ryan replied: “I agree with you that young progressive, innovative companies can easily adopt this service. But a vast majority of large companies are going to have a hard time integrating this because like you said they have the wrong people in the company.”
I agree with him 100%
Check out Yammer and give me your opinion.
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seems like a office twitter group. it will have the same problems of information flood as twitter in a large company. it needs something more.
September 11th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
If you’re interested in Yammer you should also check out http://present.ly. It’s a micro-blogging tool for businesses much like Yammer, but with better features including groups and media sharing.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Yammer reduces the number of meetings and cuts down on email. People wouldn’t keep it open all the time, they get updated how they want and check back when they have time.
Yes it would be much nicer to walk to someone’s office and ask a question but the working world is global now and as telecommuting continues to rise, software-as-a-service like this is going to improve communication.
“Information flood” is exactly what people said about introducing IM into the work place.
I have seen it work wonders at companies first-hand and I expect this to be no different.
I have people in Jamaica, Miami, Atlanta, NY and Toronto, with more to add in the UK and Trinidad.
Email, or post updates about the status of projects? Call each person, do a conference call or post about the status? Share the link to an article about the company, allow cross-talk or email?
Twitter has done wonders for Zappos because it has a usage policy in place. Smart companies figure out how to leverage new tools for their benefit in ways that increase productivity and reduce costs.
Employees who push back on this are not right for the organization that want to implement this and so good riddance.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:06 pm