[alexscheelmeyer]

I am one who thinks "Yay! Another accelerator to the Microsoft death-spiral" when reading this.

I am not sure what data it is you want me to put in my data bank, as I do not buy your premise that getting bought by Microsoft is any kind of validation. Quite the contrary.

You can get rich by playing the lottery, just as you can get rich by making a crappy product that you manage to get enough hype around to get sold to Microsoft. It does not mean you should bet on the lottery as a viable business strategy.

Getting the world to think your crappy product is the newest silver bullet might be a viable way of making money (see Zynga, Madoff, et al), but it does not lend itself very well to reproduction.

If you have some specific details on what makes Yammer objectively superior to alternatives (and not just a fad) I am all ears though.

[pbreit]

Just so I'm clear, you're comparing spending 4 years building an extremely successful business communications company to winning the lottery? Bernie Madoff? Casual gaming? Downvote.

[alexscheelmeyer]

You can compare things on many aspects. The Zynga/Madoff comparison was on trajectory - meteoric rise followed by sharp fall. Such a trajectory characterizes the scam or fad. My point is that Yammer is a fad, Madoff was a scam and Zynga is probably a bit of both.

When a colleague of mine heard that Yammer was bought for 1 billion he exclaimed : "Oh, so THAT is what we should be doing - create a crappy product and get bought by Microsoft!". My point is that other factors than creating the crappy product is what gets you bought by Microsoft. There is no causal relationship between the quality of the product and the money received. Another similarity to Zynga/Madoff btw.

So the conclusion is that you are better off creating a quality product, despite such evidence to the contrary. Likewise you are better off providing real value to the world, despite some people getting rich by winning the lottery.

[mangodrunk]

I agree with you and think you explained it well. There are also examples in MSFT acquisition history where there were bad purchases.