Yammer, a Twitter-like messaging system for businesses, has seen solid growth since launching last week at TechCrunch50 (and taking the top prize).
CEO David Sacks says there are now 10,000 networks and 50,000 users just one week in. Yammer’s business model is to let people use the service for free, spreading it throughout the enterprise. When and if a company wants to take administrative control over the account, Yammer charges $1/user/month. Administrators can set access controls, such as IP controls and SSL.
The company already allows interaction with the service via the site, an AIR client, iPhone, Blackberry, IM, SMS and email. This evening they’ve also launched an API to allow third party developers to build Yammer into their applications.
First up is Seesmic, which is simultaneously announcing that they’re buildiing Yammer support into their Twhirl desktop client. Twhirl is used today to access the Twitter, Friendfeed and Seesmic video chat services. Integration should be completed in the coming weeks. (Disclosure: I’m an investor in Seesmic)
We signed up to Yammer just after the TechCrunch50 conference last week. Nearly everyone is using it regularly now. We have 14 members and 161 total messages.
The Yammer demo video from TechCrunch50 is here.
nice growth after one week.
I’m using it at the day job and everyone is impressed so far. We’re using the Adobe Air app, Blackberry client, and web client.
Presently, the only customization to look and feel you get for the paid version (we are paid version) is you can upload your company logo.
what I really want to see asap is groups.
We’re running into that request too. I’ve requested an Client key to get around this for now but groups would be very helpful.
You guys really want this to be successful don’t you.
not particularly. if they screw up I’ll hammer them, just like we did with twitter. the fact that they chose to launch at TC50 means I’ll always have a warm place in my heart for them, though. Even if I’m critical of them.
Yeah, but its nice when judges get it right. Twitter? I don’t remember them launching in TC50
Nice project-tool, it really cuts the communication hazzle. And we started using it just 2 days ago…
Where is the disclosure Michael? I believe you are an investor in Seesmic . Follow some journalistic ethics mate.
first of all, mate, the disclosure is there and has been from the beginning. second, all i did was link to the damn company, so chill.
It was not there originally Michael. I read the post and then posted the comment. Ban me no problems about that. But I would like to see blogs to behave more like journalists and have complete disclosure. Its not personal
and oh yeah, you’re banned.
a little over the top, no?
+1 for Yammer
+2 for Yammer obviously
Like them because they have brought a business model to twitter.
Don’t like them because they haven’t really innovated and so many other companies deserved the $50K from TC50 – not some cashed up spin off that was developed from multi-million dollar funding internally within Geni.
Hopefully we don’t see 55 articles reviewing them every week when they introduce some new …..
We’re using it at Metacafe for the last week and it’s great. 50 users and 350 messages! We were actually planning on implementing something like this in-house, but that was before we knew about yammer. It’s twitter for the workaholics.
oh – and for whatever reason, they don’t advertise that their iPhone application is now available.. just search for it on iTunes.
Great info!
I wonder if our iPhone users already figured that out
I love your definition of “solid growth” – I think you meant “soaring”.
Most companies would love this in their first week, plus all the free publicity.
Yammer won 50k, but the real prize was the millions in free advertising and publicity. No real need to spend on marketing.
The next thing will be scaling and adding a new server every week – for a year.
Everyone is watching – so good luck with it.
P
Nice to see yammer taking the route of charging user instead of simply displaying ads for revenue generation.
Do you guys think a company with 200 employees using yammer would pay $200 a month to claim their network? I was just wondering what tangible benefits this brings to justify this cost. $1 per user per month seems a little arbitrarily set to me and I’m struggling to see what value it would add to my organisation. I could quite easily implement a simple message board for employees that we could put on our website or intranet.
It depends really.
As they pick up companies and users I fully expect the pricing model to expand based on volume and value added services.
And the fact that you could “quite easily” do something not hosted is as valid an option as someone saying host it elsewhere. But ask yourself how many companies would either:
a) DIY
b) pay their iPBX/Centrex vendor to enable a UC seat with messaging
c) rely on a horrid mobile carrier solution or
d) outsource to a company that gets at 80% of the functions they desire
If anything, Yammer getting this far this fast must light a match under other companies that will parrot the service using Laconi.ca, Ruby front ends, and mashing up other things…
Or not.
So, yeah, $2400 a year doesn’t seem like too big a stretch for a 200 person company.
However, I seriously doubt all 200 people would uniformly use it. It’s more likely that a percentage of the company would use it for informal teaming and projects to build quorum.
BTW, when you claim, you get Admin rights to boot users and thereby decrease your license costs.
yeah agree. they’ll be forced to put pricing plans in place that make sense for large organizations.
Yeh you’re right that most companies would not have the in house expertise to put together a crude hosted option, I was just making a loose point based on the relative simplicity of pulling together a message board type app for let’s say the company intranet which I guess would be the obvious alternative although it’s unlikely to be mobile compatible as you say.
However, I’m still not sure I see what the benefits are that justify the cost. Okay it’s a quirky new way to communicate but the free version provides this as much as the paid version does. To me the only tangible benefit is in the pockets of the guys at Geni who have managed to dupe companies into paying for Twitter.
Am I right or am I wrong?
Ray – right or wrong is rhertorical I hope?
Here’s a factoid: I asked the partner address at Twitter about private or so-called white label service back in April 2008.
[sound of crickets]
Don’t get me wrong. I think Twitter kicks ass on numerous levels they might not even comprehend themselves.
But…
Yammer isn’t what Twitter is about and the same flows the other way.
Analogies are dangerous, but, it’s very much about why LinkedIn isn’t what Friendster is about. LinkedIn started small then started building up to address a niche for HR pain.
Right now, I guarantee you that companies struggle with internal communication and bad email culture. If you look at the Forums over at Yammer you’ll see the desires (some misguided, yes) of the existing base.
So, is a “dupe” really the case, or a refinement on the demands that a ready for business case mandates?
Yammer has my credit card and I’ll keep it there for as long as I perceive there to be a value with. To that end… I’ve already had this conversation on Twitter with e-learning oriented folks that took a similar “it’s just twitter” position.
My view thanks to the search function in Twitter (painful, I might add…):
1) I had 8 people from work — engineer through executive — on Yammer in 30 minutes. We already had our first “a ha” moment.
2) To Yammer critics, please name at least 2 other “easy” quorum building tools that operate over disparate devices, locales, and roles.
3) I feel that for distributed business these services, like Yammer, are all about building quorum. May competition be plentiful.
4) My only XMPP/Track lobby (I listen to Steve Gillmor shows, btw) yawn is plumbing discussion vs. what users want as interfaces now.
5) I just hope all the XMPP players take a page from Yammer and, frankly, steal the polished ideas like signup sequence. Compete!
Jay – You make a great case for Yammer, I have to say I’m not a critic of the service per say, I was simply unsure about whether it’s something I’d be willing to pay for – especially if I’m employing several hundred people (hypothetical).
For companies that are spread “over disparate devices, locales, and roles” maybe this will supersede more tradtional media as a matter of efficiency. And of course you can’t put a price on “A ha” moments and if Yammer is able to promote the exchange of ideas more effectively then it could certainly be money well spent. So I guess these points answer my question although some sort of graded pricing plan for larger organisations would no doubt be prudent in helping persuade execs in larger organisations to claim their staff.
I see the comparison that you’re drawing with LinkedIn but LinkedIn doesn’t charge me.
Nice! looking forward!
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I wonder if you using a site like this would help boost organic search engine rankings….
For some reason, Yammer is not working for our comp for last several days, it keeps giving an error msg sayign site under construction…. i am wondering why…
romit, we haven’t had any other reports of this. Can you email help@yammer.com so we can determine the issue and get your network going again? Thanks.
This is a very nice idea. Twitter in every sense, but for the business community. Well done folks
“enterprise twitter” is a cool concept but outside of smaller, tech oriented companies how much wide-spread user adoption will there really be?
http://twitter.com/khawe
Still no mention of http://present.ly ?
None at present.
cool revenue model: unencumbered growth followed by money.
will many companies just ignore the admin. feature?
Michael, how about some mention of the competition? Present.ly launched on Tuesday and the overall word in the blogosphere is that it’s much better than Yammer. It would be great to have TC give it a little attention seeing as how it was rejected from TC50.
present.ly is great. but it isn’t nearly as polished or useful as yammer. and their spamming is really turning me off.
One small correction: Yammer and its applications always use SSL; it isn’t just an administrative feature.
I’m really surprised no one is mentioning Socialcast.com. We have researched all three of these services and given the superior user interface and better performance as a knowledge base that Socialcast has I would think it would receive more attention in this conversation.
It is true that it currently lacks some features available with Yammer and Presently but after speaking with the founder earlier this week I am convinced that they are about to release a host of new features over the next 60 days that will vault them to the top of the pack.
I posted the following comment in a more recent post:
“Socialcast.com should not be overlooked. It has a much better user interface than either Presently or Yammer and is much more functional as a long term knowledge base. It has no character limit (Presently limits posts to 140 characters) and allows multiple domains (Yammer limits users to a single domain).
Socialcast also has a bookmarklet which makes it great for accumulating knowledge online without having to be logged in to the site. You can also use the bookmarkelt to update your status right from the browser (again without being forced to login).
I spoke with the founder by phone earlier this week and it sounds like some exciting new features are on the way that will allow Socialcast to quickly bypass the early entrants. I’d really look forward to TechCrunch arranging an early preview and review of Socialcast’s new features.
It looks like these will be the 3 big players in this exciting new area of Enterprise 2.0 and based on our research I wouldn’t be surprised if Socialcast winds up on top over the long term.
http://www.socialcast.com “
Don’t bet on it.
I really like Yammer and have encouraged our 15 employees to use it weekly. The only problem I have is the need to input your credit card for a free account. They say it’s to “verify” that we are actually from the company we say we are from but isn’t that the purpose of the email domain recognition?