TechCrunch50 isn't really a competition, it's a series of product demos. This is kind of like presenting the philosophies of different religions and then voting on which one is the "best". The whole thing is subjective and there is absolutely no need to declare a winner, especially when the market will ultimately decide. This is exactly why YCombinator doesn't have investors vote on which company "won" Demo Day. I pity our american idol society that always wants a panel of judges to tell them what to like.
As for Yammer itself, I'm thoroughly unimpressed. At the least they could have made it look different than twitter. They even copied the UI. There were so many companies doing truly innovative things... TechCrunch50 seems like a total farce.
I don't get it. No matter how you spin it Yammer is just a Twitter for businesses. Companies like GoodGuide and Swype were much more deserving of the grand prize.
Google was yet another search engine. iPod was yet another MP3 player. Doing something better (or for the right audience) is often what it takes.
That being said.... I dunno if Yammer captures the motivation for USERS to "yam" (tweet?). I can see why people use twitter. I can see why businesses would want Yammer. But I can't see why business employees would want to use Yammer.
It seems so obvious, yet Twitter has been around for a several years now and no one has done it yet.
I do think there were other "cooler" companies, but this could be huge. Right now Twitter mostly consists of a relatively small group of web/tech people. Just like what happened with Facebook and colleges, if Yammer gets critical mass in a few big companies, it could explode.
Yammer is far from the first enterprise twitter app. Oracle, IBM and now SAP all even have versions in some form or another, and Prologue, the wordpress based one, has been around for almost a year.
I agree with you that Yammer has the potential to be very huge. I'm not denying that. I'm just surprised with so many innovative minds making up the panel of judges that they didn't choose someone with more of an original idea. There's a great quote from the TechCrunch comments that says "Doesn't the Valley pride itself in innovation?"
When Twitter launched people said it was "just" a place for people to post what they're eating and that it wasn't nearly as worthy as feature rich services that had come first (Upoc and Dodgeball).
I'm very surprised. Fitbit was seriously the only one that I said to myself: "I really want that". And more importantly, I signed up to be emailed when it was out so I could _buy_ it.
it's not about that form of communication though. IM is sustained communication. yammer is about "working on the login form problem, ticket #241" so all coworkers know what everyone is doing. it's not 1:1
I doubt many companies will want all their insider knowledge on a hosted solution.
As far as black mailing them into using it? I doubt it...a corporation is much more likely to simply ban the site so that their insider knowledge instead of going through the process of signing up and entering their CC details
So I IM'd my buddy to say hi, and tell him that the company he works at got props by Daniel from Digg at the D.Construct conference. "Oh I don't do Geni any more, I'm working on another startup called Yammer"
Isn't life funny. I guess some people thing he's doing well. :)
I don't think the idea's all that bad. A friend of mine in the Berlin scene recently suggested something similar and I do in fact notice myself using Twitter these days to keep our 2.0-ish-customers and co-founder appraised of what I'm working on.
"Yammer was founded by former executives and early employees of PayPal, eGroups, eBay, and Tribe. It is backed by venture capital firms Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures."
Maybe it "won" because it has the PayPal mafia backing it...
yeah it does sound like ididwork but I can see why TC went crazy for Yammer. Yammer sold its self as a communication tool while ididwork sold itself as a sort of Rescue Time/punch card/productivity tool.
In the end Yammer looks fun while ididwork looks scary.
As for Yammer itself, I'm thoroughly unimpressed. At the least they could have made it look different than twitter. They even copied the UI. There were so many companies doing truly innovative things... TechCrunch50 seems like a total farce.