By Amanda Barnes 12/21/2020
In the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure of working for a variety of companies across different industries. The one common thread between them all was their hurdles and barriers when it came to technology–particularly social media. None of them could figure out how to really take advantage of technology to help propel their organization forward.
I am a passionate advocate of a variety of tools across the Office 365 stack, but the one that always comes out on top is Yammer. Its ability to add organizational value and cultivate culture is just unmatched. So, without further ado, let me tell you what Yammer is, why it’s exploded in the enterprise space, and how to get started using it.
What is Yammer?
Yammer is a unique social networking service designed with enterprise communication in mind. Yammer was created by a company called Geni with the sole purpose of helping employees connect and communicate across their organization. It was hugely successful, and was later expanded to become both its own product and company that was launched in September of 2008.
Yammer quickly caught the eyes of many eager buyers before it was ultimately acquired by Microsoft in 2012. Microsoft rolled the new product into their Office 365 suite in 2014, and today it is used by 85% of fortune 500 companies worldwide.
You can think of Yammer as being the Facebook of the corporate world. An extremely inclusive Facebook, where friends are replaced with colleagues, ads are replaced with corporate reminders, and updates are related to events, questions, and problems colleagues are trying to solve.