The case against enterprise microblogging
As a consistent Twitter user, I've found the service to be a valuable marketing tool, as well as an entertaining activity for my friends to shoot one-liners at each other.
Last week, I started experimenting with Yammer, a Twitter clone that facilitates private microblog user groups, a feature that Twitter not only doesn't have but refuses to say if it will ever offer.
My team of five started using Yammer on a Monday, and by Friday, we decided that it was pointless. First, it's not integrated with anything else we use--Twitter, IM, Skype, e-mail, etc. What's more, the Yammer application for BlackBerry is embarrassingly bad. I realized pretty quickly that it's better to just use e-mail, if you want to communicate to a small private group--at least for now.
Lest you think I am picking on Yammer, I'm not. My recent short-lived experience showed me that enterprise microblogging provides minimal benefits to the organization. If our group had been much larger, and we wanted to do some kind of short announcements, it might prove useful, though hardly compelling.
The lack of threaded messages among the users and the challenging interfaces of most microblogging services also affect communication styles by enforcing a shortened message. That sounds like a good idea, until you are forced to spend more time trying to figure out what someone meant in 140 characters. The reality is that most people are poor communicators, and they are even worse, when it comes to their writing and editing skills.
When it comes to business, you don't want to read between the lines, as you do in your personal Twitter verse. Even with enterprise e-mail overload and a never-ending supply of documents flying back and forth, at least you have the ability to state and substantiate a point.
I know of at least one other Twitter-like service that will launch in the next month or so, with several new compelling features for enterprise users. Meanwhile, we'll go back to e-mail and IM for our quick communications.
You can follow me on Twitter @daveofdoom.
Dave Rosenberg dishes up "Software, Interrupted" with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @daveofdoom. 
Your brief article is filled with inaccuracies:
* Yammer does integrate with email, IM (jabber), and SMS.
* Messages are threaded.
* There is no 140 character limit on messages.
If these features escaped your attention, it's not surprising that you missed file sharing, images, tags, links, RSS feeds, groups, integrated search, tabbed profiles, and admin tools -- just some of the features that make Yammer much more than a "Twitter clone".
As a "recognized [by whom?] thought-leader", would you also admit the possibility that your experience with a few buddies isn't representative of how an enterprise would derive value from Yammer?
For those looking for a more conscientious third-party analysis of the Pros and Cons of Yammer, check out this recent blog:
http://anetahall.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/yammer-pros-cons/
Regards,
David Sacks
CEO, Yammer
I would also like to note that the Blackberry client doesn't use the "Return" key to open a message and offers other non-functional features that I left out.
Please also note that I didn't say that Yammer had a limit, sorry if the words were confusing.
This statement was several paragraphs after I said I wasn't looking to slam Yammer.
"The lack of threaded messages amongst the users and the challenging interfaces of most micro-blogging services also affect communication styles by enforcing a shortened message. That sounds like a good idea until you are forced to spend more time trying to figure out what someone meant in 140 characters."
I'm not trying to bait you, just defend my product and correct inaccuracies
Present.ly which is a Yammer like tool, a microblogging tool for the enterprise, has a lot of customization options.
Moreover, the Intridea Lab (that developed Present.ly) can help you with your strategical decisions (they have a separate group of people just for strategy development for businesses utilizing social media). They recently published a book called Social Corp, you might have heard about it.
I would highly recommend contacting Intridea, and maybe finding out more about "microblogging in the workplace" and what it can do for employee and their customers.
I hope this helps.
As far as microblogging in a business environment goes... a younger, hipper culture (not necessarily mine) is used to being in tune with what everyone is up to. Knowing that Jan is working on a proposal., Tim is updating a policy on a web page, and Sue is in a meeting with so-and-so lends a certain amount of momentum and connectedness to a workday and that can be very beneficial. Who knows? Broadcasting your busy schedule could increase your perceived value as an employee and save your job if your boss follows you on Twitter or Yammer.
For the record, I'm not a fan of Yammer either. We tried it but everyone in my organization hip enough to try Yammer already follows each other on Twitter. Actually we *live* on Twitter with no time or patience to fire up a second iPhone app. :)
This statement was several paragraphs after I said I wasn't looking to slam Yammer.
"The lack of threaded messages amongst the users and the challenging interfaces of most micro-blogging services also affect communication styles by enforcing a shortened message. That sounds like a good idea until you are forced to spend more time trying to figure out what someone meant in 140 characters."
Email and IM are one-to-one or one-to-few channels of the old fashioned "push" variety. Yammer is a one-to-many channel allowing recipients to "pull" information they are passionate about. In corporations employing thousands of people distributed around the World there are pockets of duplicated expertise. Micro-blogging facilitates connection between those experts that no other tool (email or IM including) could do. You simply meet people you would not have otherwise met. Resulting synergies and multiplication of locally developed business value across the entire enterprise is priceless.
I don't know what your definition of "enterprise needs" is, but not all enterprises are created identical. Not all departments within a given enterprise are either. A product can meet a real need without necessarily meeting everyone's needs, let alone your (possibly inaccurate) preconception of what everyone's needs are. This one does.
I'm not trying to bait you, just defend my product and correct inaccuracies.
The reason I liked it so much in my previous company was that we were highly distributed geographically, but also highly dependent on each other. It was really nice to feel like you were "in the know" even though you were 2000 miles away from headquarters. And Twitter just wasn't appropriate for the types of things we were communicating (e.g. Just closed $200,000 deal with XYZ customer! woot!). I used the Instant Messaging integration so that I didn't need to install yet another client.
I liked it and wish my new co-workers were more open to the idea. Maybe I'll try again with them in 6 months :)
- by crc710 March 2, 2009 3:30 AM PST
- Dave,
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(18 Comments)I was amused that you made what I consider to be a minor grammatical error when writing about the poor communication skills of most people.
Instead of: "The reality is that most people are poor communicators, and they are even worse, when it comes to their writing and editing skills."
I would have written: "The reality is that most people are poor communicators, and they are even worse when it comes to their writing and editing skills."
There is no need for a comma between "worse" and "when".