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Yammer: This thing is a prize winner?

Started by mathewi · 9 months ago

Like more than a few people (as far as I can tell by reading through my blog and Twitter feeds) I confess that I was more than a little gobsmacked to find out that Yammer had won the TechCrunch50 prize. It may well have been a tough field for the judges, given the number of [...] ... Continue reading »

27 comments

  • Stu

    9 months ago

    Holy crap, that thing was the *best* Arrington could come with?

    Assuming (hoping, praying) that it was just poor judgment, and there actually are some sites who would be more deserving. What contenders looked decent?
    reply
  • leigh

    9 months ago

    Lame, lame, lame. But then again, look at the high level of sophistication of the judges...here's the quote from the Salesforce.com CEO

    "I really like this company the best.

    The name is not very corporate. It reminded me of what I’m having for Thanksgiving. Maybe you could use a Yam for a logo."

    A yam as a logo? Next question: What exactly was the criteria for winning?
    reply
  • Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray

    9 months ago

    I completely agree, when they announced that Yammer had won, my jaw dropped. I was tempted to jump up and scream above the crowd "What the hell are you people thinking?!?! This is not the most deserving winner!" I think Swype and Adgregate Markets are far more revolutionary and game changing than a threaded twitter clone that does the same job as a message board.
    reply
  • ankesh

    9 months ago

    I think you are missing something here. Put aside the that Twitter could have, should have or will do this. There is a clear need for better corp communications. This was the whole promise of Wiki's like jotspot and Socialtext. HR/corp communications will be clambering over themselves to sign up. Knowledge retention, better communications, and more social integrated organization. Also they actually have a revenue model. I think this can be bigger than Salesforce.
    reply
  • seemsArtless

    9 months ago

    This was the first year I paid any attention to TC50, but tuned out when someone in the panel basically said the only place on earth any sort of important innovation could come from was Silicon Valley.

    Not that the rest of the panel let him get away with it, but boy it seems like Web 2.0 has become stale and inbred, and the fact that Yammer won is an excellent example of this.
    reply
  • Mark Evans

    9 months ago

    Just got invited to join Yammer. From what I can tell it's just like Twitter except instead of asking "What are you doing", it says "What are you working on?".

    I'd be interested in why TC picked Yammer given it's interesting but not particularly innovative.
    reply
  • anon

    9 months ago

    It might help to explain that David Sacks is CEO of Geni, which is a sponsor of TC.
    reply
  • Corvida

    9 months ago

    This could be the biggest problem with Web 2.0 in general. Ideas of innovation are running low. Who can blame them for taking and running with whatever they can. However, I agree that this isn't an award-winning service nor idea.
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  • SEO

    6 months ago

    Award winning idea? I doubt it. Seem more like a copy of existing idea.
    Rif Chia
    reply
  • JoeDuck

    9 months ago

    I think the next round of "winners" will be less tech innovators as they will be biz innovators - effectively using the tools we now have to solve old problems cheaply.
    reply
  • JoeDuck

    9 months ago

    Thanks for panning this choice as I was about to do, but felt a little guilty since my (retirement planning) startup didn't even make it to the final 52. I'm now comfortable it's not sour grapes, rather the fact that few of the TC50s seemed to have a biz model. Frankly I don't see much of one here either for the reason you note - this is a one day (one hour?) project for Twitter or a a Google team, both of which have large customer bases already.

    As with the TC40 and startups in general I'm guessing the real winners will bubble up unpredictably on the basis of forces well outside of the control of even major players. That said it was *fantastic* of TechCrunch to livestream the whole conference and do such a fine job of keeping readers posted in near-real time of developments.
    reply
  • Daniel Gibbons

    9 months ago

    Well didn't Mint win last year even though it wasn't remotely close to being the choice of most of the judges? Perhaps I'm mis-remembering but wasn't it the case that JC and MA had final say on the winner, regardless of voting?

    I didn't attend this year so can't really comment any further, except to say that I did sign up for Yammer this morning, and while it does exactly what it says on the tin, it's spectacularly unexciting.
    reply
  • Jeff Greco

    9 months ago

    At least Mint was an interesting new product, a breath of fresh air in its market. Not so much with this Yammer nonsense. Seems like a blow for future TC50 credibility.
    reply
  • Daniel Gibbons

    9 months ago

    I'm not sure that Mint was particularly interesting -- just some shiny css on top of Yodlee, right?
    reply
  • Peter

    9 months ago

    I'm really waiting for someone to show some love for Dropbox!
    reply
  • Brian

    9 months ago

    I completely agree.
    reply
  • JimAtJaxtr

    9 months ago

    I'd be interested to see how many businesses do get interested in this tool. I think Yammer is a response to an unsaid question in the social media community of how do you make money off/create a sustainable business out of Twitter? I could see how Yammer could make money, even though it really isn't offering anything revolutionary; it's just repackaged the Twitter concept for business.
    reply
  • Tim

    9 months ago

    Laconica, the open source clone of twitter is a better choice if one is wanting to pull this behind the firewall. It should be mentioned along with its first commercial version Identi.ca.
    reply
  • Rurik Bradbury

    9 months ago

    You're so right. 'Feature as a business' can never take off in the enterprise because IT departments hate complexity, and Web 2.0 app sprawl is the last thing they need.

    There are so many of these ludicrous Web 2.0 collaboration apps that have no future. BTW you should take a look at our offering, Unison. It's a client/server app that is the polar opposite of Web 2.0 (ie it is not Web-based and it actually has the prospect of huge adoption...)
    reply
  • jacobmorgan

    9 months ago

    wow, i just wrote a post titled: "are you really a company or just a feature/application?" i mention yammer in there as well. check out the post i think we are definitely on the same page here, was shocked!

    http://www.jmorganmarketing.com/are-you-really-...
    reply
  • Jason

    9 months ago

    It seems that divergence, rather than convergence, drives a lot of successful products. The iPhone is more the exception than the rule. Grab a feature, make it simpler, easier, sexier, and ultimately more useful. Facebook or Basecamp status messages I'm sure were the inspiration for Twitter, which doesn't seem to warrant a standalone system, and yet... here we are. Yammer is a further divergence. Twitter represents status messages for people, and Yammer for corporations. It will be interesting to watch them over the next year.

    Jason M. Putorti
    http://blog.novaurora.com
    reply
  • Eric Rice

    9 months ago

    Nothing against Yammer, I'm just surprised that out of all the OTHER stuff, *it* was the winner. I dunno, enterprise twitter vs. an augmented tool that overlays/reads the real world and displays meta info.. it's like overlaying Google over your real life when you hold a phone camera up to it.... but I'm yammering on now. Heh. Par for the course, guys. This is what our leadership in the new media journo blog world is bringing us. Can't blame big media anymore.
    reply
  • Stuart MacDonald

    9 months ago

    I agree 'thewie. A bit of a head scratcher. But it sure gets folks talking, hey? :)

    - Stuart
    reply
  • naffis

    9 months ago

    If you're interested in Yammer you should take a look at http://present.ly. It's a micro-blogging tool for businesses much like Yammer, but with added features like groups and media sharing. The business model is also different in that it doesn't hold employers hostage.
    reply
  • Taylor Davidson

    9 months ago

    Another example of how the echochamer works...
    reply
  • JoeHageOnline.com

    9 months ago

    I wish Twitter got there first. It's a good tool. I want to introduce for my company but will essentially have two applications running doing basically the same thing.
    reply
  • Alex

    8 months ago

    Web Based business.. I wish we could have something else i am getting Bored
    reply

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