DorjeM

Recently I was asked " What are the top 10 points you think are important to get across to staff at all levels in an organisation about Yammer? " My initial reaction was "Tough ask", mainly because I've seen great write ups on what organisations get out of Yammer but very few that talk directly to the user benefits. Many articles give the usual cop out "users can't see the point, until they get it" I admit I was in that boat when I started using Twitter, a public micro blogging platform. But just like they said "once I used it I got it". What they didn't say was that it took a while and it suits certain people better than others. So as with all things in the social media space, be aware that culture change not the technology may be your biggest challenge. So what does Yammer, a microblogging platform for organisational use , do for real employees that is compelling enough for them to spend the time to "Get it" ? First off Y...

Talking to Yammer CEO - David IBF found that Yammar has helped glue IBF togeather David was COO of PayPal Then started Genie - family tree social networking site Got more than 30 employees so wanted a way to solve email overload and keep everyone connected. We liked twitter - but everyone sees your updates, very hard to limit to those with same email domain as you. IBF use skype and email as well as Yammer, 40 in team globally. Helps allow questions and feel a sense of community Nic Price - feels like a little bit of intranet outside the intranet on the cloud Q David what is the market for Yammer A We want Yammer to spread virally, make money off yammer as an enterprise product. Empower employees to communicate - free for users, enterprise can gain control by paying for admin tool access. Q What is the payment model ? IBF pay nothing at present A That is OK, effectivly it is a free trial period $1/user/month is what you pay for admin tools Q Some companies felt annoyed by users signing...

I've just been got on to the IBF24 intranets live event and the very first thing I find is David Sachs - Yammer founder - citing my old stomping ground SunGard and how Cris Conde appreciated the organisation flattening value in Yammer. I am lucky enough to have benefited directly from Yammer putting me directly in touch with Chris despite being about 10 managers seperated from him in the Org structure when I was working for SunGard. His comments directly to staff made a huge difference to the culture of the organisation - one of the really very valuable aspects of tools like Yammer. Who says serendipity doesn't play a part in the world ? :-) More on the benefits of Yammer I've previously posted

because twitter have blocked me I'm blogging Dean's talk Employees publish - senior managers "NO WAY!" Where is fear coming from of social intranets for C level managers ? Came up with mock screen capture deck. Modified each one with more and more social features. Successive ones moved from third to first person. Then added microblog to the screen capture. Then changed top microblog item to be more and more inflammatory. Planned trigger points - non-related information / personal opinions / information mildly inflamatory used microblog posts to introduce the trigger points. Then went through captures with WHY they bothered C level managers in during interviews. Were looking for "reach for the phone moment" Eight major concerns, 3 were US business law related Top 5  (may or may not be legitimate concerns, these are fears) lack of social filters, some things JUST don't get talked about at work e.g. bald ceo comes back from holiday wit...

I've just been up from 4am until 6am and watched the sun touch the harbour out the window. Yep yet another joy of living at the end of the earth - and why you ask ? Well today was the first IBF (Intranet Benchmarking Forum) Intranets Live event . I live blogged - thanks for the inspiration Michael Sampson - the event. A first for me so apologies to those who I was recording for any mistakes, they are mine alone. Overall an interesting session - shame it will cost so much to attend following sessions. Kellogs walk through Talk with Shiv Singh about intranet wiki Talk with researcher about wikis Intranet doctor takes a look at BT and Corus intranet issues CapitalOne intranet manager interview Interview with Yammer CEO , enterprise twitter 200 attendees from more than 20 countries, including a few hardy souls from the south pacific. There were several technical hitches that meant we couldn't see Shiv Singh's presentation and didn't get to hear Jane McConnell at all...