Microblogging service Yammer was introduced in 2008 and today claims that over 60,000 businesses use it worldwide. Despite the rapid uptake in adoption, most organisations we interviewed for this summary reported mixed experiences and some internal resistance.

What justifies yet another internal communication tool alongside existing tools such as e-mail, intranets, wikis, SharePoint and instant messaging? Does Yammer enable us to work smarter and potentially even reduce e-mail? Currently it seems like Yammer has a key strength among departments or small organisations as a cheap way to introduce microblogging.

Clearly the adoption of Yammer is still at a very early level, in particular among our large, complex and global members, among whom most still  only use it within less than 10% of their total workforce.

Yammer front page for a sample organisation

What’s the value?
While Twitter and Facebook might be the most popular microblogging services available, Yammer has so far set itself out by focusing exclusively on the environment behind the firewall; internal company usage only. This is changing with their recently released Communities feature.

Yammer is strong when used to share links, ask questions and make useful connections between employees in different locations. Some report that Yammer has helped reduce e-mail overload as some communication now flows via Yammer rather than via inboxes. Beyond these soft benefits, there is still little or no experience with actually measuring a monetary value from the usage of Yammer.

Several reported that they’ve configured Yammer to send a summary, typically daily, of all messages via e-mail. This is quite helpful on busy days as an easy way to follow the discussions. Chicago-based Tony Bailey of Acquity Group recommends limiting the use of upload and instead encouraging users to link back to an official repository. This is solid advice in terms of avoiding the establishment of yet another repository. Bailey also suggested publishing the Yammer feed directly on the intranet; something which we’ve not heard from the adopters we talked to, but which could be worth considering in order to make Yammer the pulse of the department or potentially entire organisation.

What’s the interface?
Similar to Twitter and Facebook, Yammer offers a web interface, where you can post and read messages. Similar to Twitter, many don’t actually use the web interface, but other apps to interact with Yammer. Firefox has a popular plug-in called YammerFox, which enables you to type a message directly within Firefox and also provides real-time notification when new messages are added. Yammer has a dedicated app, which you can download and install, but several has reported that this is flaky and rather dissapointing, at least on Windows machines.

How do you increase adoption?
According to UK-based Carolyn Clarke at EDF Energy, Yammer was the quiet discovery of one division. As a company without appetite for instant messaging or chat rooms, EDF Energy is using Yammer at departmental level alongside e-mail and telephone. Only a few use it and as Carolyn said “In a big organisation, a ‘side channel’ has a certain rebel appeal.”

At the Danish National Board for Social Services, they did not get a public endorsement by senior management. Instead they started it at a department level and let it grow. This seems similar to what happened at EDF Energy and several others we talked to.

You’ll get most mileage out of Yammer if your audience is relatively tech-savvy and willing to experiment with what some might call “yet another tool.”

What does it cost?
Yammer has a free of charge Basic plan and then offers additional administrative services starting at $3 per user per month.

If you transfer to the paid version you get services like custom branding, security tools, directory integration and keyword monitoring.

Learn more
For more information on Yammer see:

• Real Story Group: Yammer’s microblogging branches out (Mar 2, 2010)
• TechCrunch: Yammer Communities Open The Door To B2B Microblog Collaboration And Much More (Feb 25, 2010)
• Wikipedia: Yammer
• Zendesk: How Yammer Supports 50,000+ Networks and Collects Customer Feedback (Feb 22, 2010)

Thanks to @BrianBentzen, Carolyn Clarke at EDF Energy and @tony_bailey and several others for sharing their emerging practices.