Yammer Announces the Enterprise Graph

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Yammer, Inc., a best-in-class Enterprise Social Network and part of the Microsoft Office Division, today announced a new App Directory and platform at its first customer conference, YamJam '12. The platform offers standard components to more easily build social networking features, such as feeds, profiles, following and likes, into business applications. This approach not only helps save developers time, it also enables enterprise customers to seamlessly connect people, conversations and data across their business applications — an experience Yammer calls the "Enterprise Graph."

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The key components of the new platform include the following:

• Embeddable feeds. Yammer now offers embeddable feeds for virtually any business object, such as a record, document, opportunity or other piece of data. Previously, Yammer offered embeddable feeds only for Groups and individuals. The new object feeds allow applications to easily include conversations about business data in context.
• Embeddable Follow and Like buttons. You can now embed Follow and Like buttons inside virtually any business application to track updates from business objects.
• Pages. Similar to Profiles for people, Pages are profiles for business objects. Pages show recent activity, followers and conversations. By using Yammer Embed, the same information appears on the business object's Web page in the original application. (A note-taking application in Yammer previously called Pages has been renamed Notes.)
• App Directory. Third-party applications that take advantage of the Yammer platform now appear in the App Directory after they have been reviewed by Yammer to ensure they meet certain privacy and security criteria. It is now easier than ever for enterprise users to discover and install apps inside Yammer.

The Enterprise Graph

Realizing the power of social networking, a growing number of enterprise applications are including social features such as profiles, feeds and connections in their software. Although the new software provides a higher level of usability than traditional enterprise applications, enterprise customers can be confronted by the problem of too many social networks inside their company, which reinforces silos and fragments internal communication.

The Yammer platform solves this problem of "social network sprawl" by creating an Enterprise Graph that provides a standard set of social components. This standardization means that all of a company's employees and business data can be brought together in a common conversation layer.

Just as Facebook is creating a social graph for people's personal lives, mapping the connections between people, places, music and games, the Enterprise Graph shows how employees, content and business data are connected in the workplace.

"This release standardizes enterprise social into a simple set of tools that the entire industry can use," said David Sacks, Yammer founder and corporate vice president, Microsoft Corp. "It will not only save developers a lot of time reinventing the wheel but also create a uniform social experience for all employees across their business applications."

"The future of business is connected, and Enterprise Social Networks are a critical part of this connectivity. Businesses should be built on the foundation of an ESN to connect people, data, content and systems," said Michael Fauscette, group vice president, Software Business Solutions, IDC. "Effective execution on its social layer strategy is a reason Yammer was recognized as a Leader in the IDC Marketscape: Worldwide Enterprise Social Software 2012 Vendor Analysis."¹

All new features will be available to customers immediately.

About Yammer

Yammer (www.yammer.com) is a best-in-class Enterprise Social Network used by more than 200,000 organizations worldwide — including 85 percent of the Fortune 500 — to foster team collaboration, empower employees, drive business agility and socialize their intranets. Yammer's freemium business model lets customers see the value of Yammer before upgrading to the premium offering. Founded in 2008, Yammer is now part of the Microsoft Office Division.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

¹ IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise Social Software 2012 Vendor Analysis, doc #237336, October 2012.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.