Recently came across a great service for those who might want a secure and private place to convoke colleagues to chat, but could not be bothered to install an intranet, forum or jabber server.
It is called Yammer, and it is a hybrid between Twitter, a discussion board and Facebook, but entirely private – for your company employees only. You need a valid company e-mail account to join your company network.
Here are its features:
- Yammer is a discussion board for your company: post a status update; ask a question; shares news, links, opinions, and information.
- Yammer is a private social network for your company: each user gets a profile displaying their photo, title, expertise, background, what they are working on, etc.
- Yammer is a knowledge-base for your company: you can search for any topic to see who’s talking about it and what’s been said. Great for new employees to get up to speed.
- Your employees stay connected wherever they are when they use Yammer through our free web, desktop , BlackBerry, iPhone, IM, email or SMS clients.
- Yammer is only accessible via SSL, and only by employees with a valid company email have access. Additional security restrictions can be added after claiming your network.
There is also a useful Firefox plugin for it called YammerFox
