

Yammer Wins TechCrunch50 - spencerfry

I'm kind of surprised by this. It's just Twitter on a private network. Thoughts?
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hooande
TechCrunch50 isn't really a competition, it's a series of product demos. This
is kind of like presenting the philosophies of different religions and then
voting on which one is the "best". The whole thing is subjective and there is
absolutely no need to declare a winner, especially when the market will
ultimately decide. This is exactly why YCombinator doesn't have investors vote
on which company "won" Demo Day. I pity our american idol society that always
wants a panel of judges to tell them what to like.

As for Yammer itself, I'm thoroughly unimpressed. At the least they could have
made it _look_ different than twitter. They even copied the UI. There were so
many companies doing truly innovative things... TechCrunch50 seems like a
total farce.

~~~
jrockway
_TechCrunch50 seems like a total farce._

s/50//.

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mannylee1
I don't get it. No matter how you spin it Yammer is just a Twitter for
businesses. Companies like GoodGuide and Swype were much more deserving of the
grand prize.

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tlrobinson
It seems so obvious, yet Twitter has been around for a several years now and
no one has done it yet.

I do think there were other "cooler" companies, but this could be huge. Right
now Twitter mostly consists of a relatively small group of web/tech people.
Just like what happened with Facebook and colleges, if Yammer gets critical
mass in a few big companies, it could explode.

~~~
jmacd
Yammer is far from the first enterprise twitter app. Oracle, IBM and now SAP
all even have versions in some form or another, and Prologue, the wordpress
based one, has been around for almost a year.

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fallentimes
I'm very surprised. Fitbit was seriously the only one that I said to myself:
"I really want that". And more importantly, I signed up to be emailed when it
was out so I could _buy_ it.

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jlogic77
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think the business / enterprise world
works that way with updates about what people are doing and all.

Maybe some companies will "claim" their names on the site, just to reserve
their name.

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nuggien
Every company I've worked at has used some form of IM to communicate. Not sure
how yammer is better than IM.

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PStamatiou
it's not about that form of communication though. IM is sustained
communication. yammer is about "working on the login form problem, ticket
#241" so all coworkers know what everyone is doing. it's not 1:1

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snewe
Looks like a more sophisticated version of:

[http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/introducing-
prologue...](http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/introducing-prologue/)

Oh, and Backpack's status updates:

<http://backpackit.com>

I guess it's the packaging?

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vaksel
I doubt many companies will want all their insider knowledge on a hosted
solution.

As far as black mailing them into using it? I doubt it...a corporation is much
more likely to simply ban the site so that their insider knowledge instead of
going through the process of signing up and entering their CC details

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sh1mmer
So I IM'd my buddy to say hi, and tell him that the company he works at got
props by Daniel from Digg at the D.Construct conference. "Oh I don't do Geni
any more, I'm working on another startup called Yammer"

Isn't life funny. I guess some people thing he's doing well. :)

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wheels
I don't think the idea's all that bad. A friend of mine in the Berlin scene
recently suggested something similar and I do in fact notice myself using
Twitter these days to keep our 2.0-ish-customers and co-founder appraised of
what I'm working on.

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soho
"Yammer was founded by former executives and early employees of PayPal,
eGroups, eBay, and Tribe. It is backed by venture capital firms Founders Fund
and Charles River Ventures."

Maybe it "won" because it has the PayPal mafia backing it...

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spencerfry
Here's the list of finalists:

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/10/yammer-takes-
techcrunch...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/10/yammer-takes-
techcrunch50s-top-prize/)

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furiouslol
I like it. It's practical. It's useful. It solves an existing demand. Has an
ingenious biz model. What more do you want?

I'm using it now and I'm loving it.

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planck
Stop! Yammer time: <http://www.chrisfinke.com/addons/yammer-time/>

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venjax
This sounds kind of like <http://www.chatterous.com/> to me.

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bigbang
actually it sounds like ididwork to me

~~~
gabrielleydon
yeah it does sound like ididwork but I can see why TC went crazy for Yammer.
Yammer sold its self as a communication tool while ididwork sold itself as a
sort of Rescue Time/punch card/productivity tool.

In the end Yammer looks fun while ididwork looks scary.

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floozyspeak
ya,lame- yammer not that new, just evidence that hey twitter for corporate
could be cool

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floozyspeak
<http://statushq.com/>

