

Will Yammer fail because of the constraints of the enterprise? - nlwhittemore
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/03/yammer-will-viral-work-in-the.html

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nlwhittemore
I tend to agree with other commenters. I think this is a really good piece,
but I don't think these issues are lost on Yammer.

The most interesting thing here for me is the articulation of the difference
between the buyer (IT guys) and the users (employees). This is the central
problem with enterprise software I think, and the reason that the field lags
behind consumer software in innovation.

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wallflower
> The question of data privacy and ownership comes up over and over in our
> Yammer discussions.

We use Yammer enterprise wide. It is wildly successful. Even if a lot of the
information shared is publicly available, that by itself is ground-breaking,
as we have so many business units that knowing who just released a new product
based on X is enlightening. As for sharing proprietary information, it's a a
common sense filter that is easily applied whether it is ok to redistribute
something from a Yammer update. If in doubt, don't.

You might dismiss Yammer as a Twitter clone but Yammer was smart enough to
realize the Fortune 500/Enterprise market wanted a hosted, secure solution.

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jasonlbaptiste
Why does everyone figure business software needs to be a success in the
enterprise (mega corps with 5 layers of IT that veto shit for kicks)? There
are tons of small - medium sized businesses that they can profit off of and
win. They're already doing that quite well. Of course you have the venture
return problem: They've taken ten million or so, need to be looking towards a
100 mil exit. Can they do that without going after scary enterprises? I think
so.

Ps- Yes I know small and medium sized businesses have their own problems, but
they have the path of least resistance.

