Yammer Communities Extends Microblogging
to Customers, Partners

by Clint Boulton

Private microblogging networks help users reach out from behind their firewalls to connect with partners, customers and suppliers.

The arrow points to the new Communities tab in the redesigned Yammer interface.

Here is a sample Yammer Communities list view.

To create a community, users will input a network name, description and thumbnail, and invite other users by e-mail. Communities may be set up so that only an administrator or any user can invite new contacts to a Communities network.

Users with multiple Communities can easily toggle back and forth between various Communities networks, creating related ties between each network. The numbers in the drop-down menu indicate how many messages users have in each separate network.

A new Customer Support Community has been created.

This is how it appears in the Communities directory.

Under the account drop-down menu, users may manage their networks, applications and other settings.

Yammer pledges free and premium security tools to help protect corporate microblogging.

That’s right. Yammer Communities will work on Apple’s iPhone at launch March 1.