I’m not a social network expert by any measure, but it seems to become clear that although the initial enthusiasm among the geek-crowd was big, Google Plus isn’t cutting it in the real world. I don’t have a Plus-tab open in my browser any more and when I do go Plus, there isn’t a lot going on in my circles which I want to participate in.
Compare that to the way Yammer took off at the company I work for; in less than a months time 800+ colleagues (out of approx. 1500 employees) joined and we’re getting to know new colleagues, discussing more or less work-related topics (1500+ messages) in the open or in multiple interest-specific groups (15 at this moment). Good times!
I don’t know how Yammer is doing in other companies in Belgium (and Europe by extension), but to me is seems that Yammer succeeds where Google Plus is failing; bringing together a group of people (in a more or less “private” environment) that share a common context but who didn’t share a social network before and allowing them to engage and to create engagement.
Google Plus might be neat from a technology & privacy point of view, but it essentially was (and still is, I guess) a “me too” exercise, trying to occupy a market that has already very successfully been taken by Facebook & Twitter. And yes, Yammer does have an API.
Interesting. Do you put company confidential information on it as well? Are the managers not worried about that?
no, confidential info doesn’t belong there, conversation is always somewhat work-related, but in general more of the coffee-corner-chit-chat kind. facebook, but for the workfloor 🙂
There is a slippery slope going from “event invitation: party for my birthday” and “event invitation: party because we just signed a major contract with XYZ”, no? Sounds risky…
Well, the yammer networks are private & only accessible with a valid company email so risk is somewhat limited. In the payed-for version you can limit the risks some more.
In my believe Google+ is still a bit overestimated. Maybe try Yammer, it sounds interesting.