[douche]

I've never understood the appeal of these business Facebook-clones. I really don't get what business problem they are supposed to solve, unless it's just ticking the "social" box.

I've worked with a number of them, mostly doing data extraction and munging for compliance reasons, and whether it's Lotus Connections, Yammer, Salesforce Chatter, or the other ones I'm forgetting, they seem like somebody went through a lot of effort to create something that's anti-productive.

[seren]

I am working in a global company (>200K) with people in all timezone. Sure we are connected at the top by the same executives but at the bottom of hierarchy we are mostly working in silos, while we are facing the same issues regarding regulations, suppliers, technologies.

So even if it is superficial it is a way to reach out and connect with people facing the same challenges. I don't expect someone from another business to solve my issues but at least I can get some input/ideas/feedback.

This is still a rather poor way to connect, but I don't see any better solution at this scale. Much better than a mail @all-company "is anyone else working on X?"

[rubidium]

I have to agree. I've found many helpful resources and people through our corporate yammer (fortune 200 company).

It's the perfect tool for "hey I'm struggling with __, got any recommendations?" in very large corporations.

[basch]

the appeal _should_ be the same as reddit/hackernews

some people post a piece lots of people should see, some people chat publicly, and the rest lurk and ingest passively. instead of the same conversation happening over and over and over in isolation, you can see and learn from what other people are talking about.