Part of being a middle manager requires keeping tabs on what your subordinates are working on. The goal is to do this without being intrusive, yet staying aware and in control. So when applications come along that streamline the process and tear down the walls between employees and managers, you would think there would be an ice cream party in the conference room.
I’ll leave it for you to decide if Yammer, winner of the TechCrunch 50, is the ultimate micromanaging tool or if it’s the communication breakthrough that thousands of career strategy books have been unable to uncover.
As you likely know, Twitter is the micro-blogging site that asks you ‘What are you doing?’ Registered users post updates on the Web via computer or mobile device that are under 140 characters in length. Yammer puts a twist on the question, asking users ‘What’s happening at your company?’
Each users’ updates are centralized on a single page, giving employees the opportunity to discuss ideas, ask questions, post news, or very publicly, put in their two weeks notice.
In order to protect your company’s privacy, only employees with a valid company e-mail address can join your company network.
The service is free, unless your company wants to claim and administer their network. When choosing to pay, companies have the ability to remove users, delete messages and customize the look and feel. You can try it out for free for three months. After the trial period you will pay $1 per month per member of the network.
According to Yammer there are currently 10,000 people and 2,000 organizations signed up for the service. A public API is in the works.
My current company, which employs several hundred people locally, has yet to have anyone register. I was the first. And probably the last.
“People get to use great consumer internet sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and Geni, to communicate in their personal lives. Then, when they get to the office, all the software is antiquated and hard to use — that doesn’t make sense. We want to do something about that,” says Yammer founder and former PayPal COO David Sacks.
As pointed out by many of the site’s critics; all Twitter has to do is roll out an enterprise feature and Yammer will likely be crushed.
Under the guise of increased productivity, there is clearly a push for Big Brother 2.0 in our cubicles. I say we fight like hell to keep him away.
Are bosses right to expect that we keep them abreast of every superfluous Web search or bathroom break? Well, that’s exactly the portal that micro-blogging opens up. Be careful before you embrace Yammer and the like. Regardless of where you fall on the food chain, this smells like trouble.
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