Microsoft Buys Yammer for $1.2 Billion!

Microsoft buying Internet startup Yammer for $1.2B

Microsoft will be taking over Yammer, the social network for companies, for $1.2 billion. Is Yammer really worth $1.2 billion?

Microsoft doesn’t seems to care if Yammer is worth the buck but wants to jump into the social networking bandwagon as soon as possible and with Yammer in it’s pockets it will really help jump start the process.

Yammer specializes in creating private social networks so employees within the same company can keep tabs on what colleagues are working on. That’s similar to how Facebook’s online social network allows friends and families to track what’s happening in each other’s personal lives.

Microsoft has for sometime shunned the shift in technology paradigm but has slowly began to embrace the changes.

Microsoft recently announced the launch of it’s very own tablet PC, Microsoft Surface.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is counting on Yammer’s sharing tools to ensure that long-established Microsoft applications, including its word processing and spreadsheet programs, remain vital components for getting work done. Google Inc. has emerged as a threat with a toolbox of similar programs that run primarily over the Internet rather than on individual machines.

“Think of Yammer as a fundamental part of our Office family,” Ballmer said on a Monday conference call.