Microsoft in pursuit: Rumours of a bid by Microsoft for a social network highlight its clients' growing appetite for setting up their own networks
Posted in: Internet Use/New Technologies at 25/06/2012 08:03
Hundreds of millions of people have joined social networks, swapping news on Facebook, spouting opinions on Twitter or amassing professional contacts on LinkedIn. Rather fewer may have realised that they work for one. Companies, in essence, are collections of people, with ideas and expertise of different types. The trick of business success lies in harnessing these human qualities.
Lots of software companies are trying to help other companies do just that -- and thus, in the phrase of the moment, to become "Facebook for the enterprise". In business as well as private life, young companies have been making much of the running, with some older big beasts of the technology industry straining to catch up. This month it was reported that Microsoft had agreed to buy one of these upstarts, Yammer, which is less than four years old but boasts more than 5m users in companies, for $1.2 billion. Neither side is commenting on the report.
http://www.economist.com/node/21557341
