Even though a lot of technical people don't like Outlook, most business people I work with seem to love it. The immediacy and flexibility of CC or BCC'ing a group of select people and "reply to all" will make this seem awkward at first.

Also does it handle attachments? Dragging screenshots of my work into an email and sending it out to people to view is easier than uploading to a URL and pasting it into there.

I've used twitter for a while and imo yammer fixes the bits that are broken with it.

Sure my first response was, how is this any different to Twitter, and the difference isn't great:
built in support for hashtags (really great for posting on projects/products/topics) and doing away with the 140 char limit.
As you say the security isn't great, but it's something, and honestly it's no less secure than google's enterprise app products, like docs, calendar and sites.

I aggree that as an piece of sofware, it's trivial. but so is twitter. I also agree that copycats will spring up everywhere. And I also belive that calling this an enterprise product is a mistake, it doesn't scale well to enterprise, as the bigger it gets, the more like twitter it becomes. Where this is valuable and usefull is in productivity enhancement in tandem with something like basecamp to store things for posterity and planning. i.e. basecamp is the past and future, yammer is now.

Whether it was a worthy winner, I can't judge, I haven't seen all the pitches/products but it's one of the more usefull products I've seen coming out of these kind of events.

Is the vehemence of this denouncement perhaps linked to all the twitter love that permeates RRW?

Yammer also helps security-conscious microblogging fans who can't get laconi.ca installed because of lack of resources.

Yammer solves some of Twitter's privacy concerns. Less need to set all notices to private, send direct messages or create multiple accounts.

And then ...

Yammer can quickly become gossip central for Web 2.0 individuals working for not-so-aware companies.

Until ...

A Yammer message (a yam?) offends someone. That person complains to company leaders, who then contact Yammer and insist they take down negative comments.

At which time ...

Yammer pulls out its "business model."

This is simply a niche variation(enterprise focus) of a niche service(micro-blogging).....what's so hot in THAT pot?!!

I'm generally a fan of your insights but I think you might be overlooking the place where Yammer can fit in corporate communications.

I wrote my thoughts on why I think Yammer matters:

http://blog.blist.com/2008/09/13/why-yammer-matters/

In that post you could substitute any Yammer-like offering. It's not a post in support of Yammer the company, but rather the need for an enterprise-Twitter offering.

One irony is that it seems everyone is quick to criticize web 2.0 companies for having no business model and here's one that has come up with an admittedly controversial way to get paid and everyone criticizes the business model. Isn't Yammer's business model similar to the one employed by GetSatisfcation, which no one objects to?

Many people look at the articles and opinions about start-ups as gospel. This is far from the truth. Everyone has an opinion and the reader must disseminate good advice from bad.

Yammer is a joke. My company would never embrace it. It is not even original.

However, what I find more troubling is the current mentality of US small business ventures. The mentality is to create hip google like name, like Yammer, get VC funding, roll out a mediocre product and hope that you can sell your stock or company as quickly as possible. Please do not forget the people who are getting rich hyping these companies.

How about this ladies and gentlemen...why don't you invent a technology that solves a very simple mainstream problem and be cash flow positive! I do not care if you make 50k or 200k profit but be profitable! Once you are profitable getting VC is a snap. Showing positive cash flow is a proven method for success.

People forget that investing in stocks is capitalism at it's finest. Stock are risk reward. VC companies also invest in risk reward. They know out of 10 deals maybe 5-7 will return zero investment. But the other 5 or 3 might be home runs. This shotgun mentality is what makes America great.

However, younger generations are being so spoiled by technology companies which have "15 minutes of fame" that they have forgotten to be innovative. It is always about building a company and being profitable. Have a sound business model from day one and don't wait years to show a profit.

We need to move away from the "top 10 mentality" and get back to reading War and Peace.

Our foreign competitors are blowing the doors off us. Yammer is a disappointing winner and is a reflection or our pop mart vc initiative.

Sorry for the rant but Yammer winning rubbed my rhubarb. I have 3 companies in my hometown that deserve higher praise.

JF

At Hosting365, we have just over 50 staff, spread across two countries and 3 offices. We have people that tele-work as well.

Yammer has been the best communication tool we have ever used. I absolutely love it. All our staff are on it, and we've set up hash tags for major cross-departmental projects.

We use IM heavily - but group chat is just not suitable. Email the same problem. The best comm's tool we've utilised to date has been an Internal Blog.

Yammer allows anyone in the organisatio to post an update of what they are working on (say, a customer deployment) or something interesting they have come across. Previously this information was limited to their immediate peers and line manager - now the entire staff can see it. Already we've seen better visibility from remote teams, and better integration of projects that affect more than one department.

We've been on Yammer for just a few days now - but it's been well adopted and used for positive business communication. So far - it's the web tool of 2008 for us. Highly recommend.