Yammer lets businesses can set up private "social" networks where employees can communicate. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Is corporate America ready to adopt social networking alongside traditional office tools like word processing apps and spreadsheets? Microsoft is making a big bet in that direction. It has acquired Yammer, an "enterprise social networking" startup, for $1.2 billion in cash. The deal is Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) biggest acquisition since Skype, which it bought last year for $8.5 billion. Yammer operates like a gated Facebook (FB): A business can set up a private network where employees can post announcements, share files, create events, swap messages and more. It also offers more traditional corporate features like a content management system and an "extranet" that businesses can use to communicate with outside contacts like customers and vendors. Yammer, which was founded in 2008, had raised about $142 million in venture funding. It claims more than 200,000 corporate customers, including 80% of the Fortune 500 list. So-called "enterprise social" startups have been hot in the M&A space lately. Salesforce (CRM) snapped up the social media marketing company Buddy Media last week for a cool $689 million. That was just one month after Salesforce bought collaboration software company Stypi. In late May, Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) acquired Buddy Media competitor Vitrue for a reported $300 million. Source: CNNmoney
My prediction threads:
Wii U will sell under 40m units (made on 14th September 2012)
PS Vita will sell under 20m units (made on 30th September 2012)
Wii U will sell under 7m in 2013 - I was right
