Microsoft rumoured to acquire Social Network Yammer

Microsoft would like to strengthen its position in the web sector Community by buying the social network Yammer. Microsoft will spend $1.2 billion to buy this start-up, which includes social networks for employees of companies, says the Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft is preparing to finish the acquisition of Yammer for $1.2 billion (795 million), confirming a report by the agency Bloomberg and site Business Insider. Yammer, little known by the general public, was created in 2008. It was originally thought as deriving from Twitter for business. Employees of a company, who registered the site with the email address of their society, could easily talk to each other and follow each other without the risk of revealing confidential information to others.

Since then, Yammer has changed. The site is now approaching Facebook, which has freely taken the design. Options for document sharing, project management, survey creation and events were added to the basic function of dialogue between employees. Yammer has now raised $142 million to finance, including 85 million in February, with a fifth round of the valuing approximately $500 million. The company has 300 employees.

However, it is unknown whether this network will be free eventually, as a huge investment has to be retrieved and get huge profits, especially if Microsoft is doing all these operations.

For Microsoft it could strengthen its offering for Office 365 that is already offered by SMEs which is a turn-key solution to hand their website with desktop applications, and a solution for Exchange email, calendars and contacts. Right now, the professional social network rests on a mixed model, mixing a free offer & Pay subscription, which is not in the habits of American publisher. It is used by about 4 million people, including 800,000 paid accounts, accessing advanced features. About 200,000 companies, including Ford and eBay, have subscribed to this service.