[aguynamedrich]

The first comment is a self promoting alternative (daPulse) whose website looks very similar and whose product, much like the one being promoted, just looks like a slightly different Yammer. This seems to be an unnecessarily crowded space.

EDIT: Not the first comment...just the top one at the time I read the article (didn't realize comments on TC are sorted as newest first by default)

[bretthellman]

aguynamedrich, What Yammer did well is reinvent the social intranet for making announcements inside the firewall. It allowed for one person inside a company of 1000s to broadcast to the entire company.

What Yammer never had a chance to perfect before being purchased/killed was how to be the place where people actually work... The way people work has changed in the last few years. People are working 24/7, using multiple devices, working in distributed teams, in teams that are cross-company etc... These changes making communicating in real-time a necessity which is why Hall is focused on real-time communications.

[mindcrime]

So how do you guys solve the issue of most "enterprise social software" being nothing but a fairly shallow replacement for / complement to, email?

(Disclaimer: I'm the founder of a startup that's also playing in this space (depending on how broadly you define "this space"), and I don't really know if we're competitors or not!)