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Microsoft Buys Yammer for $1.2B (SocialTimes)
Microsoft has agreed to purchase Yammer for $1.2 billion in cash. Yammer is one of the largest providers of enterprise social networks, allowing companies to implement their own Twitter-like service for their employees. Guardian The purchase of Yammer, dubbed “Facebook for the workplace,” is the latest installment in Microsoft’s bid to protect its dominant Office products from a challenge by Google. The service claims to have more than 5 million corporate users at groups including Ford, Shell, Deloitte and Ebay. Microsoft News Center “The acquisition of Yammer underscores our commitment to deliver technology that businesses need and people love,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft. “Yammer adds a best-in-class enterprise social networking service to Microsoft’s growing portfolio of complementary cloud services.” Yammer “When Adam Pisoni and I started Yammer, we set out to do something big,” Yammer founder David Sacks said. “When most people thought social networking was for kids, we had a vision for how it could change the way we work. Four years ago, we started paddling out to catch the wave that we’re riding today.” Techcrunch At first, actually, Yammer was not intended to be a company at all. It was built as an internal feature within a genealogy startup called Geni, to let Geni employees communicate with each other about work. Business Insider We couldn’t help but notice how frighteningly similar that $1.2 billion number is to the current valuation of Jive, another social networking app for the enterprise — also worth $1.2 billion. continued…

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