[brown9-2]

I don't think they were intended to really change anyone's perspectives, but rather just clarify a private conversation accidentally made public.

If anything, I just find it really odd that a company feels the need to have an official statement on what programming language they use/will use/might use.

[csmt]

I think Coda did a good job in posting Yammer's official position clarifying the situation and it's a captivating blog post.

Many people (including some people on HN) started criticizing Yammer because they decided to go back to Java. This blog post was in some sense necessary for Yammer.

[eropple]

Same. I really, really like Scala, but I found it kind of strange that they felt obligated to go "wait wait wait, we like Scala, really...!"

[VonLipwig]

It was him trying to end all of the stories floating around caused by the private but public email.

He didn't want the last word to be Yammer hates Scala and need's to jump ship. He thought it necessary to give a more balanced overview and provide subtext to the original message. I think he succeeded in doing this.