Microsoft Buys Yammer | Facebook Board Finally Gets a Woman

Click here to receive this Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email. Microsoft Buys Yammer for $1.2B (SocialTimes) Microsoft has agreed to purchase Yammer for $1.2 billion in cash. Yammer is one of the largest providers of enterprise social networks, allowing companies to implement their own Twitter-like service for their employees. Guardian The purchase of Yammer, dubbed "Facebook for the workplace," is the latest installment in Microsoft's bid to protect its dominant Office products from a challenge by Google. The service claims to have more than 5 million corporate users at groups including Ford, Shell, Deloitte and Ebay. Microsoft News Center “The acquisition of Yammer underscores our commitment to deliver technology that businesses need and people love,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft. “Yammer adds a best-in-class enterprise social networking service to Microsoft’s growing portfolio of complementary cloud services.” Yammer "When Adam Pisoni and I started Yammer, we set out to do something big," Yammer founder David Sacks said. "When most people thought social networking was for kids, we had a vision for how it could change the way we work. Four years ago, we started paddling out to catch the wave that we’re riding today." Techcrunch At first, actually, Yammer was not intended to be a company at all. It was built as an internal feature within a genealogy startup called Geni, to let Geni employees communicate with each other about work. Business Insider We couldn't help but notice how frighteningly similar that $1.2 billion number is to the current valuation of Jive, another social networking app for the enterprise -- also worth $1.2 billion. Facebook Adds COO Sheryl Sandberg to Board of Directors (Inside Facebook) Facebook announced Monday that Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has joined the company’s board of directors. All Facebook Sandberg wears many hats at the social network, overseeing sales, marketing, business development, legal, human resources, public policy, and communications, and the only more visible Facebook executive is Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself. Facebook Newsroom “Sheryl has been my partner in running Facebook and has been central to our growth and success over the years,” said Zuckerberg. “Her understanding of our mission and long-term opportunity, and her experience both at Facebook and on public company boards makes her a natural fit for our board.” The Hill Sandberg was a vice president at Google before joining Facebook in 2008. She also served as chief of staff for Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers under former President Clinton. Forbes Given the pressure that’s been on Facebook to increase diversity on its board, Sandberg’s appointment does not come as a total surprise to the tech community. Buzzfeed Shift Two groups, The California State Teachers' Retirement System and a feminist organization called UltraViolet, have been very vocal over the past few months in trying to convince Facebook to add a woman to its board. The Next Web When people freaked out Monday because Facebook started dropping a @facebook.com email address into your “About” section on your Timeline, we didn’t flinch. Facebook told us about this feature in April. All Facebook Facebook abruptly pulled its new find friends nearby feature, first reported Sunday, which listed users of the social network who were also logged into the application’s page. Did the threat of a lawsuit have anything to do with it? On Orbitz, Mac Users Steered to Pricier Hotels (Wall Street Journal) Orbitz Worldwide Inc. has found that people who use Apple Inc.'s Mac computers spend as much as 30 percent more a night on hotels, so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see. The Verge Although the default results are different for Mac and PC users, it's not the case that Mac users pay more for equivalent rooms. In other words, Mac users are more likely to see more expensive options, not made to pay more for the same hotel. CNet From an analytics perspective, targeting by operating system and pricing accordingly may not be such a bad idea. The bonehead move of the century is Orbitz yapping about it. Orbitz did note that pricing by OS is just an experiment. Instagram’s New “Explore” Brings The Future Of Photo Discovery Into Focus (Techcrunch) Instagram may be looking to follow in Foursquare’s footsteps and give you more to do than just post and browse the main feed with Monday's iOS app update that merges Popular with search to create its own Explore tab. It also added new Facebook sharing controls, visual and speed improvements, better commenting, autocomplete for search, and revamped profiles. Gizmodo The update is not wholly transformative, but it brings to the already popular app a few incremental advancements that improve the overall experience of the app. Mashable One more small but welcome feature of Instagram 2.5: Getting to your Camera Roll, for those of you who like posting shots you’ve already taken, is no longer a two-click operation. If you tap and hold the camera button, you’ll go straight there. Beyond @sweden: More Country Names on Twitter are Rotating Users (Mashable) It’s been two weeks since Sonja Abrahamsson caught international attention for a string of controversial statements she made as the ‘Swede of the Week’ on Twitter. Meanwhile, it seems the idea of giving the voice of your country to a rotating cast of Twitter users is catching on. Can't They Just Tweet @jack? Square Sends Copyright Complaint to Twitter (The Next Web) This is hilarious. Square, the mobile payments company founded by Jack Dorsey, has sent a copyright infringement complaint to Twitter, the social networking company founded by Jack Dorsey. The complaint centers around the account @SquareRegister, which Square claims uses a trademarked name and the logo for its Register product as an avatar. Real Angry Birds Try to Take Flight in China (China Realtime Report) Rovio Entertainment Ltd., the Finnish game developer behind the Angry Birds franchise, is trying to grow from a mobile game company into a global brand and a big part is a full-on marketing blitz in China, which it says is its second-largest market after the U.S. Even though fake Angry Birds products abound in the country, Rovio China General Manager Paul Chen is undaunted. Reuters While many companies go on the offensive against counterfeiters with legions of lawyers, Rovio is taking a mixed approach: waving a legal stick at some pirates, but seeking ways to cooperate with, and appropriate ideas from, others. Rally.org Cause Crowdfunding Platform Raises $7.9M of Its Own (All Things D) Rally.org, which helps people run online fundraising campaigns, has raised $7.9 million from a long list of backers. While project-specific online fundraising a la Kickstarter and Indiegogo is particularly hot right now, Rally is about bringing more traditional online fundraising online, by helping people tell stories about their causes and continue to raise money on an ongoing basis. Smile, You're on Yoko Ono's New App (Chicago Tribune) In the 1960s, Yoko Ono set out to create a film that would include the smiling face of every person in the world. Now, nearly five decades later, the project has come to life as an app. #smilesfilm, a new iPhone app, allows people around the world to view and upload snapshots of smiling faces. ReadWriteWeb That's great and all, but we came up with nine things that a Yoko Ono app really should do.

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Microsoft Buys Yammer | Facebook Board Finally Gets a Woman | Angry Birds In China

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