Microsoft To Buy Yammer? 73
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft seems to have a pocketful of billions sitting around. First Skype, now Yammer – an enterprise social network service launched back in September 2008 that looks almost like Facebook minus the title bars. According to Bloomberg, the deal could reach up to a billion dollars. To date, Yammer claims 200,000 companies which include more than 400 of the 500 Fortune companies. One reason for the purchase may stem from their social-like Sharepoint platform which has been a lost cause to solutions by Salesforce.com and Oracle."
Perfect Fit (Score:2, Informative)
For what it does, Yammer is awe-strikingly unreliable. You either have to use a web page that a few years ago was able to update itself with new messages via javascript but now fails several times per day (remember to hit reload button at least every 15 minutes if you don't want to miss something important), or you can use an app which requires some bizarre Adobe (?!) dependency and often uses 100% of a core in order to occasionally poll the server for new messages.
if Microsoft does this, they'll be buying absolute garbage: a text-message relay service which can't really relay text. An Internet service where people communicate primarily only to other people in same org, so they could be using a jabberd or something on the LAN but that would make too much sense. Way to go, Microsoft. Glad to see the Borg doesn't just assimilate useful or functional species. How altruistic, to give Yammer's owners a way to cash out of their shockingly broken company.
A lost cause? (Score:2, Informative)
SharePoint is a billion dollar business. And the fastest growing product of Microsofts Portfolio. So a lost cause uh?
TFA got Salesforce wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Contrary to the claim of the blurb, Salesforce Chatter integrates into Sharepoint. I am a Salesforce emp and we have plenty of customer references I'd be happy to bring out.