Microblogging — Twitter/Yammer/Laconica

I finally took the time to understand how Twitter works.  I have liked the idea about Twitter, but have been concerned that the software package is not made for large organizations because the lack of privacy.  It turns out that twitter does allow you to set your account to “private” so that only those who YOU allow can view your updates.  I thought that was great, but as far as NASA and companies are concerned I think that they will still feel uncomfortable using Twitter for projects because of the lack of control.  

I did a search for “private twitter” and I came across Yammer, which is a Twitter-like software that caters to business/organizations.  Where Twitter asks “What are you doing?”, Yammer asks “What are you working on?” .  It seems like a pretty cool service that even allows companies to take “control”.  Now the issue is that it costs some money — at $1.00 per person per month it doesn’t seem too expensive.  (Yammer is free to use for employees, by design).  

Well in search for the perfect microblogging I followed the Yammer Wikipedia Site until I arrived at Laconica, which is a open-source microblogging server, which organizations can freely install inside the firewall.  Identica is the first deployment of the Laconica software.  Laconica seems to be a pretty cool software, but it is still in the beta state.  

I found other software that is comparable to Twitter, but Yammer and Laconica were unique.  No one has blogged about these two software packages so I thought it would be cool to see what you all thought about it.  

Personally I am torn between Yammer and Laconica.  I am a strong open-source advocate, but Yammer has some pretty cool functionality.  I think Twitter is a great tool for PR with NASA, but I am not sold on it being used for project status.  

What do you all think?

6 Responses to “Microblogging — Twitter/Yammer/Laconica”

  1. chri shenton  on February 25th, 2009

    There was a presentation on Laconica and Identica at this year’s Plone conference in DC. The basic gist was not the tech, but the concern over control of content. If twitter goes belly-up, or sells out to some evil empire, what happens to all the content with which you’ve entrusted them? Don’t be evil? Don’t bet on it. This was applied to the larger concept of cloud computing and data storage.

    (c.f. last week’s FaceBook content ownership debacle)

    Efforts like those by http://autonomo.us/ are intended to assert control over our own content.

  2. Evan Prodromou  on February 25th, 2009

    Hey, this is great! Please let me know what you need to have in Laconica — we’d like to see you use it.

  3. Keith McCarty  on March 10th, 2009

    Thank you for including Yammer!

    In response to Chri Shenton:

    “Absent a Network Administrator, all such User Content is owned by the User who posted it to the Service. If a Network has a Network Administrator, all such User Content is the property of the company to which the Network belongs (including all User Content posted to a specific Group or Groups within a Network). In either case, Yammer does not have, nor does it claim, any ownership rights in any User Content.” TOU – ( https://www.yammer.com/company/terms )

    We’re simply not in the business of selling content, but rather providing the the communication platform itself. Yammer just secured $5,000,000 in funding and has been making revenue since day 1. The Yammer team is very seasoned from the ground up and is led by David Sacks, former COO of PayPal. Yammer already has many Fortune 100 and 500 companies using the service. Coincidentally, Yammer does offer a Self-Hosted version, but nearly all of its large enterprise clients prefer the SaaS version because of the automatic feature upgrades, additional functionality, and cost effectiveness.

    If you’re looking for a very polished product that has proven high levels of adoption and engagement within thousands of companies, try Yammer. Anyone can start or join their company Yammer network for free, in a matter of a couple minutes (no installation, server space, or engineering time needed).

    If you have any additional questions about Yammer please let us know.

    Thank you,

    Keith McCarty
    The Yammer Team

  4. Keith McCarty  on March 10th, 2009

    Just 12 minutes someone tweeted:

    “pjdirect: Just signed up to Yammer. Took less than 2 seconds to get something of value from it. Very powerful.”

    http://twitter.com/pjdirect/statuses/1307829302

    There are endless numbers of testimonials like this that you can read about here:

    http://twitter.com/yammer_team/favourites

    We don’t state what companies use Yammer for privacy reasons, but if you read closely you’ll see employees from very reputable enterprises mention their company within their statement of how Yammer increased productivity, added efficiency, etc. You may want to contact them to find out exactly how Yammer added value.

    Thank you,

    Keith McCarty
    The Yammer Team

  5. Joan Wagner  on April 7th, 2009

    Can you please tell me the advantages of Yammer over Laconica?

  6. Marcelo  on August 24th, 2009

    Hi Rolando,

    You may want to take a look at Akibot (www.akibot.com) it is like Yammer but incorporates artificial intelligence. We’ll be happy to give you a beta test account to try it out.
    Our company collaborates with NASA down here in FL, we’re big fans of the space program. Keep up the good work!