Yammering on About Microsoft

“Yammer brings the power of social networking to your company. Yammer is as easy to use as great consumer software like Facebook and Twitter, but is designed for company collaboration, file sharing, knowledge exchange and team efficiency.”

This is the explanation given to potential new users of Yammer on their website, yet there is no mention of Microsoft. Well, at least not until recently in their updated “About Us” section. That’s probably because the people working at Yammer are still trying to wrap their heads around the fact that not only were they acquired by tech giant Microsoft last year, but that as of July in this year, they won’t be able to identify as Yammer employees. While the company still stands, anyone working for Yammer is officially an employee of Microsoft. Which means that the bosses of Microsoft are the ones decided who gets to stay and who is going to be shown the door.

There’s already been proof of this with roughly 20 employees being laid off and the original business plan being continually shifted by the new owners. We’re not trying to paint Microsoft as some evil corporation – after all, it’s not personal, it’s business – but the complaints seem to be aimed more at Yammer CEO’s that made major decisions to hand over the sales and marketing teams to Microsoft without letting their employees know until last week.

It’ll be interesting to see how this develops and how exactly Yammer-ites will respond to the take over. On the bright side, Yammer continues to be a great productivity tool and is still a secure social network for your business. There have been no reports of changing services with the application; current users can be sure that their businesses will continue to benefit from this corporate social networking site.