Yammer: An Internal Twitter for Businesses

A year ago employees at my work started asking the communication department to develop an internal newsletter so employee’s a, b, and c could see what employee’s x, y and z were working on. “But that’s so ’90s” I remember thinking. And really, in today’s world of free social media, there just has to be a better, more efficient way for employees to share what there up. Some way that doesn’t involve me trolling the hallways, stopping at each office, and asking “What are ya working on today?”

Yammer heard me! Yammer heard me! Well maybe not just me, but they heard someone, somewhere say it and they came up with a great solution. They took the Twitter concept, and made it a free app for ANY organization to use privately amongst their employees. Employees join their organization’s private Yammer network and answer the question, “What are you working on?” throughout the day, maybe even adding a link or attaching the file their using at the time. What a great way to encourage productivity and share new ideas/resources faster and farther. Best of all, I don’t have to write any newsletter (so not my thing)!

There seem to be more features, but I haven’t had much time to play with Yammer yet. Let me know as you discover cool things Yammer can do.

To sign up your organization, just create an account using your work email. That’s it. No really, that’s all.  After that, anyone who creates an account with an email address ending with @your-business-name is automatically added to the business’ private Twitter, err Yammer network.