06-23-2016 08:35 AM
You may think: Proof! Microsoft has lost confidence in Yammer. This is not at all correct. When you look at the use-case of Yammer vs. Lithium (the platform used for this community) there are a couple of key reasons for moving this community support site away from Yammer.
Yammer is a platform for Enterprise Social Neworking within an organization (and extending to that org's partners). It was not meant to handle this type of public social platform supporting multiple millions of users. Also, the requirement that you log in before you can see or search posts was a limitation of Yammer for this use-case.
Yammer continues to be Microsoft's Enterprise Social Network. I applaud Microsoft for shifting platforms to serve users better, knowing they'd be taking the inevitable "Yammer is dead" backlash.
07-15-2016 11:15 AM
Yammer IS NOT dead yet! Some customers are still using it. Please, stop only thinking in the future even if is always very exciting. Most of the customers are not ready to live in the future. They need to address correctly some current business req.
07-15-2016 11:30 AM
Naomi,
Yes, I count all those as minor tweaks. Ask a typical Yammer user if his/her pulse picks up at all when hearing that list. Minor tweaks.
The core capabilities and use cases for Yammer have not changed in the 4+ years since MS bought it. In fact, they've shrunk. In the tech world that is d.e.a.d. Compare it to SharePoint and Office 365. There was once a time, before the acquisition, when people would talk about Yammer being a SharePoint killer. Been a while since I heard that one.
You say the underlying architectural stuff has to happen first before MS can do the fun stuff. Okay, granted. MS has had four years to get that finished. They've moved faster in Office 365 and Azure in that period of time. Yammer today is a tiny service with a very limited use case, and it's getting more limited as time goes on and Office 365 encroaches on more and more of its territory.
One final thought. No one ever claims that healthy apps and services are dead. The fact we're even having this conversation is very telling.
07-15-2016 11:43 AM
This is great. Yammer was very close to being accessible but this is fully accessible for disabled Office365 experts like myselft.
THanks for this network choice.
Christopher McMillan
MSPartner for Accesssibility
07-15-2016 11:59 AM
The page layout of this new network is very inefficient. There is a entirely too much white space, the tiles are too big and excessive scrolling is required when compared to other forums.
07-15-2016 12:05 PM
07-15-2016 12:08 PM
07-15-2016 12:10 PM
07-15-2016 12:12 PM
@Christopher McMillan wrote:
This is great. Yammer was very close to being accessible but this is fully accessible for disabled Office365 experts like myselft.
THanks for this network choice.
Christopher McMillan
MSPartner for Accesssibility
@Christopher McMillan Thanks so much for the feedback! Really great to get your perspective.
07-15-2016 12:14 PM - edited 07-18-2016 10:02 AM
This is my very favorite Yammer is Dead article. It's by the CEO of Jive, from 3 years ago. For something that was a corpse 3 years ago, there sure are a lot of people using Yammer. Meanwhile in the same 3 years Jive has gone from $1.15B market cap to under $300M. Just saying.
Like I mentioned in my article earlier today, any time Microsoft retools purchased software from what it was to something ready to integrate with its other products, the short term result is somewhere between boring and awful. The fact people are complaing that they've done nothing is a pretty big accomplishment, because a great deal of the underlying infrastructure has been changed.
It's kind of like your house being converted from wooden studs to steel and then complaining that the paint is the same color.
07-15-2016 12:16 PM
07-15-2016 12:34 PM
07-15-2016 12:40 PM
Four years is not short term in the tech landscape. I could go buy a casino in Atlantic City, redo the plumbing, and open the doors four years later, but the market has moved on. Microsoft is capable of moving faster. They've demonstrated it time and again. But they haven't with Yammer.
Anyway, now that the O365 network has moved here, can we have the YCN back in Yammer?
07-15-2016 02:03 PM
I think this forum is a good way to show how much better Yammer is :) Yammer has spent years iterating their user experience, all the small changes to spacing, text, button shapes, colours, icons etc. Each of these being carefully measured to see the impact on the behaviour and engagement of millions of users. While the sharepoint development we've seen has been a little subdued while some major platform capabilities were managed there's lots of good stuff getting onto the roadmap now.
There are many bad design elements to this forum, as I type this message I can no longer see the 'people' I'm interacting with, it's a blind act of faith of posting into a blank slot. This is going to change the formula, break that ephemeral magic that was fostering a community. That's just one example, the rich text will soon annoy, the excessive white space, the inexplicable opening conversations.
Just having technical features isn't enough, we learnt that from SharePoint 2013 Communities, they had so much stuff but not the 'stuff' that makes people use it.
07-15-2016 02:45 PM
Drat! Why can't I remove a like? The interface was so slow to react that it ended up in the wrong place and yet still took the mouse click.
07-15-2016 02:50 PM
07-15-2016 02:53 PM
07-15-2016 02:56 PM
07-15-2016 02:56 PM
07-15-2016 02:58 PM
07-15-2016 02:59 PM