Microsoft Buys Yammer, Cloud Social Media Has Consumer and Enterprise Hooks
As largely expected, Microsoft bought Yammer, a social media player. This is not like Bing, which is 100% going up against Google. While Yammer does compete against Facebook for consumers, let's face it -- that ship really has sailed.
I think Microsoft bought Yammer far more because it can be used for enterprise social networking. Those steeped in the Microsoft product line may remember that Microsoft, through Lync and other tools, already offers social networking, but this requires lots of software licenses and even more IT elbow grease. Yammer is much more quick and dirty. Redmond can upsell you later.
The price of all this? A mere $1.2 billion.
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/26/2012 at 12:47 PM