Twitter has been a popular subject in class. As we twitter on the debate, and then debate about the twitter. One question comes to mind. What, if any, is the practical use of twitter. I think we could all agree for our debate function, a chat log would work just as well, if not better. I would think that most could agree knowing your friends every move isn't exactly what i would call productive.

 This is where Yammer comes in. The people over at Geni, (a genealogy/family tree web sight) have created a business model of Twitter. Where twitter asked 'What are you doing?', Yammer asks 'What are you working on?'. Yammer has a bit of a different style, but still has twitter written all over it, in it's, graphics, setup and flow. There is one key difference between the two other than "what are you working on", and that is in the networking. The key to this style of net working comes straight from the ground floor of Facebook. Yammer uses the origin of your email to link you up with the other people that share a similar email. For example if I used my school email, my feed would display what everyone else was doing for work in my company(school).

 The key to this is the First.Last@hws.edu email setup. If you don't have an hws.edu email your out of luck. This will (in theory) allows people contained in the same business to know what each other are working on. This could lead to some real productivity gains. Where business is transparent to it self and the problem of two people working on the same thing can be solved. Will this ever take off? Only time will tell. Certainly in the next coming months a common Yammer post my be 'Looking for a new job.....'

Here is a link to a New York Times article on YAMMER