Yammer Begins Merger into SharePoint

Yammer licenses will be offered to Enterprise Agreement customers beginning Mar. 2013. Yammer, a hosted social networking service for organizations, was acquired by Microsoft in July 2012. Meanwhile, Microsoft has begun selling SharePoint Server 2013, which includes a substantially enhanced social networking platform. Social networking—Web-based communication and sharing similar to that provided by Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter—has proven useful inside companies for various many-to-many communications tasks, such as resolving support questions. The Yammer licensing move begins a process that will probably end with SharePoint as Microsoft’s sole social networking technology, but only after a long period of coexistence and integration.