Twhirl Makes Yammer Irrelevant

IM is not Twitter and never will be for a few reasons.

Group IM is one to many, but doesn’t leave the archive live and visual. (At least in most instances).

Yammer’s big feature is administration. Last thing I’d want is to be the poor schmoo who’s tasked with being the Yammer administrator. I get that it’s good to be able to nab “Well, you’re a poopyhead!” posts off the archive, but oy.

Great post and great comments. I agree with Jesse that Twhirl and Laconica is the best solution. You can keep Laconica behind the firewall if that suits you or have two Laconica installations, on in front of the firewall and one behind the firewall, and use the twhirl client to feed both.

Great post and great comments. I agree with Jesse that Twhirl and Laconica is the best solution. You can keep Laconica behind the firewall if that suits you or have two Laconica installations, on in front of the firewall and one behind the firewall, and use the twhirl client to feed both.

I keep coming back to this. I love Twhirl and we’ve been using Yammer inside our company with great success since launch. I know Yammer is trying to get Twhirl to work with them, and I’d welcome that. But I have Twhirl up right beside my Yammer AIR app and I’m not sure I see the difference (beside firewall issues) between that and having two Twhirl tabs. Having FF and Twitter open in Twhirl looks, except for color, just like having Yammer and Twhirl open at the same time.

I think ultimately the idea is giving companies more options. We’re launching Present.ly in this same space next week, and with it the option for enterprises to install a private Present.ly instance inside the firewall.

Laconi.ca may well be the best solution for some companies, while a hosted solution like Present.ly or Yammer may work for others. For one thing, it will certainly be less expensive to use a hosted solution than to dedicate a server or multiple servers to an internally hosted service. It’s all about matching the feature set, security concerns, and general feel of the solution to the problem.

I think ultimately the idea is giving companies more options. We’re launching Present.ly in this same space next week, and with it the option for enterprises to install a private Present.ly instance inside the firewall.

Laconi.ca may well be the best solution for some companies, while a hosted solution like Present.ly or Yammer may work for others. For one thing, it will certainly be less expensive to use a hosted solution than to dedicate a server or multiple servers to an internally hosted service. It’s all about matching the feature set, security concerns, and general feel of the solution to the problem.

I am sorry i wasnt saying Digsby value is IM Digsby value in in the ability to login into all my twitter accounts ALL AT ONCE i have 12 accounts and all my email accounts at once.

The “inside the firewall” component of the solution is what is key. Trust me, few enterprises are willing to relinquish control (at least total control) of enterprise apps, be it collaboration, document management, IM et al. to a pure cloud computing solution managed entirely by a private firm.

This is where your twhirl option becomes very interesting. Naturally, any enterprise systems admin will have to analyse this for due diligence issues surround IP ownership, not to mention enterprise IT compliance issues…

That being said, I find your post great for revealing this most interesting enterprise twitter option.

Rob

Yammer is a much more engaging prospect for the enterprise. In the three days we have had it virally enabled within our (very large) enterprise we have had much more active participation than the equiv. Twitter + pick your choice of tools&clients. And we have tried to engage people in Twitter for some time, but have had very poor takeup.

In a nutshell that is why IMHO, I think Yammer does stand a chance – it does one thing, but it does it very well.

Yammer is a much more engaging prospect for the enterprise. In the three days we have had it virally enabled within our (very large) enterprise we have had much more active participation than the equiv. Twitter + pick your choice of tools&clients. And we have tried to engage people in Twitter for some time, but have had very poor takeup.

In a nutshell that is why IMHO, I think Yammer does stand a chance – it does one thing, but it does it very well.

When I saw Yammer, I was disappointed it won (it’s not innovative) and I wanted it for the company I work for. Now I’m glad to learn that a self-hosted solution exists without having to get into Yammer. It might take me a year to convince management that internal microblogging can add value to dislocated teams though!

When I first saw the TechCrunch50 presentation by Yammer all I could think of was “knowledge management made easy.”

Sure we’re talking about micro-blogging, inter company communication, and the Web 2.0 world, but finding a knowledge management system that is easy to install/use, maintain, and understand is a breakthrough.

Companies will decide based on their company needs and resources. If they have the developer power then they may choose to go with the custom Identi.ca but if they are resource short, then Yammer makes more sense.

Either way, companies now have a couple of exciting, intuitive, and very low cost ways to implement a knowledge management system.

When I first saw the TechCrunch50 presentation by Yammer all I could think of was “knowledge management made easy.”

Sure we’re talking about micro-blogging, inter company communication, and the Web 2.0 world, but finding a knowledge management system that is easy to install/use, maintain, and understand is a breakthrough.

Companies will decide based on their company needs and resources. If they have the developer power then they may choose to go with the custom Identi.ca but if they are resource short, then Yammer makes more sense.

Either way, companies now have a couple of exciting, intuitive, and very low cost ways to implement a knowledge management system.

Having used both Yammer and Laconi.ca, it’s hard to choose just one solution and recommend it for an enterprise. I can definitely see the advantages of both. Keep in mind that many companies already have their own XMPP servers in place and setting up the email routing would be pretty simple. Getting a Laconi.ca instance going isn’t exactly pleasant, but it’s liveable. Like others have said, Laconi.ca lives on the company network instead of outside of it, which gives them greater control over the system AND the content.

Twhirl’s integration with Laconi.ca makes it a more attractive combination, since Twhirl itself is one of the leading third-party clients for Twitter.

We are using Yammer for the last few days as an experiment. The uptake within the organization has been rapid. It seems to have great potential for quick knowledge distribution esp. where one needs a sentence/statement and a link. Not so good for a detailed discussion on a specific topic where one has a lot to put across (like forums or like the discussion here on this blog). Secondly isolating by groups is needed i.e. not all tweets are relevant to all. Tagging helps but that needs to be imposed i.e. use standard tags only else can very well get out of control. A lot of companies would not really go through the pain of installing laconi.ca and twhirl across the organization imho atleast the non-tech ones at this point in time. Maybe in the near future these systems would be routine.

We are using Yammer for the last few days as an experiment. The uptake within the organization has been rapid. It seems to have great potential for quick knowledge distribution esp. where one needs a sentence/statement and a link. Not so good for a detailed discussion on a specific topic where one has a lot to put across (like forums or like the discussion here on this blog). Secondly isolating by groups is needed i.e. not all tweets are relevant to all. Tagging helps but that needs to be imposed i.e. use standard tags only else can very well get out of control. A lot of companies would not really go through the pain of installing laconi.ca and twhirl across the organization imho atleast the non-tech ones at this point in time. Maybe in the near future these systems would be routine.

“Behind firewall” is actually a problem for the business side in big companies. Therefore Yammer is a perfect solution. You don’t have to bother the CIO (and you know it’s impossible to do that if you are an “simple” end user). You can reach it whereever you are. You can handle fairly internal stuff there.
It’s a business solution, like many new services in the cloud.

I like Yammer actually…
http://www.carlknibbs.net/blog/2008/11/21/micro-blogging-for-business-yammer.html

I like Yammer actually…
http://www.carlknibbs.net/blog/2008/11/21/micro-blogging-for-business-yammer.html