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Guest hellsten
Posted

My thoughts:

  • Yammer looks like a great product and is a great complement to SharePoint. Most big and small companies already have or want a private Facebook or whatever you want to call it.
  • Looks like Microsoft wants to compete with Salesforce (Chatter). No surprise there.
  • I wonder how well Yammer's technology (open source) and team (startup culture) will fit in at Microsoft.
  • Yammer has an impressive list of clients, see below:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/yammer-accelerates-momentum-in-a-breakout-2011-1606205.htm:

More than 85 percent of the Fortune 500 now have Yammer networks

Paid customers include:

4 of the top 10 largest companies in the U.S.

3 of the top 10 oil & gas companies in the world

3 of the top 10 construction & engineering companies in the world

3 of the top 10 beverage companies in the world

2 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world

2 of the top 10 utilities in the world

2 of the top 10 telecommunications companies in the world

2 of the top 5 Internet retailers in the world

 

https://www.yammer.com/about/who-we-are/:

Built social from the ground up with ‘Facebook DNA’: Facebook’s Founding President, Sean Parker serves on Yammer’s Board of Directors

Yammer and Facebook share the same first investor, Peter Thiel; backed by Social+Capital Partnership – a fund established by former Facebook Vice President, Chamath Palihapitiya

Posted

Am I the only one who had never heard of Yammer before this? Good for them for getting a billion, but I'm not sure if MSFT will get its money worth.

Guest hellsten
Posted

Looks like MSFT will pay 1.2 billion for Yammer. Certainly a lot of money for a startup founded in September 2008. I guess Yammer is not widely known because it's mostly used on private/company networks and has just existed for 4 years.

 

Skype+Yammer = ~10 billion. Both "products" could be gone within 5-10 years.

 

Anyway, here's more information on Yammer:

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/yammer

http://www.crunchbase.com/assets/images/original/0017/6454/176454v2.png

Posted

Skype+Yammer = ~10 billion. Both "products" could be gone within 5-10 years.

 

What do you mean by gone?  Do you mean re-branded as MSFT products?

Guest hellsten
Posted

Skype+Yammer = ~10 billion. Both "products" could be gone within 5-10 years.

 

What do you mean by gone?  Do you mean re-branded as MSFT products?

 

Gone as in replaced by some other startup's technology or product. I guess Microsoft's network effect will keep them around even if superior products appear. That and "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM/Microsoft"…

Posted

Skype+Yammer = ~10 billion. Both "products" could be gone within 5-10 years.

 

What do you mean by gone?  Do you mean re-branded as MSFT products?

 

Gone as in replaced by some other startup's technology or product. I guess Microsoft's network effect will keep them around even if superior products appear. That and "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM/Microsoft"…

 

Okay, I see what you mean.  There's also a possibility that MSFT itself will change the underlying technology in the back-end of these products. 

 

Take Skype, for example.  http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft/

 

The idea being that Skype acquisition was based on more than the technology but also the network of subscribers that came along with it, who may stay sticky if we see Skype built into, for example, this rumored Windows tablet that's coming out Monday.

Posted

Microsoft has just added adds during skype calls for non-paying users. It'll probably chase a lot of them away, though it could help make a bit of money.

Posted

Microsoft has just added adds during skype calls for non-paying users. It'll probably chase a lot of them away, though it could help make a bit of money.

 

Yeah, I saw that.  Annoying as hell.  I'll probably buy credits, and I know my parents already do in order to do group calls with family overseas. 

 

I wonder if they will bundle "free" Skype with the new OS?

Posted

Skype+Yammer = ~10 billion. Both "products" could be gone within 5-10 years.

 

What do you mean by gone?  Do you mean re-branded as MSFT products?

 

Gone as in replaced by some other startup's technology or product. I guess Microsoft's network effect will keep them around even if superior products appear. That and "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM/Microsoft"…

 

The other thing to consider is that video conferencing is a must-have feature for an OS layer that is spread across devices/screens.

 

Presumably, Skype will be front and center with MSFT's Windows/Xbox offerings.

 

Facetime, I'm sure, will be a front and center feature for the rumored Apple TV.

 

And Google Talk/Voice/Hangouts will probably be the preferred solution in Android-based devices.

 

I still don't know whether $8.5 billion was an appropriate price to pay for Skype, but perhaps MSFT was afraid that if they didn't buy an already established brand/subscriber base, they would get no traction against the competition (AAPL and GOOG).

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