I have to add a somewhat shameless plug here, because my startup is tackling <i>exactly</i> the set of problems he's discussing here. We really believe that Yammer's model is somewhat flawed, and in our experience an enhanced "internal IRC" model has worked much better.<p>I like that he mentions integrating with other systems. Some of the biggest productivity gains we've seen have come from chat bots, which interject useful information into the conversation. They can also respond to commands from users to do useful actions. Our API still needs some polish, but we'll be releasing it to the public soon. Internally, we have chat bots that notify us about svn commits, Google alerts, changes to any Trac ticket or wiki page, etc. I can't wait to see what all the hackers here do with it. :)<p>Communication tools like this really change the game, especially for distributed teams.<p>We're in open public beta right now. Check out <a href="http://shoptalkapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://shoptalkapp.com</a> and let us know what you think. We always value the opinion of HN readers.
I've been using Yammer for my startup. The members of our team are in LA and NY. When two of the three talk, the third member can catch up when he can.<p>We put notes, links and documents on there. It's also a group Getting Things Done system. We try to finish every meeting with next action steps.
We tried Yammer in a team of 12 - 15 devs. About half of them liked it. The other half thought it was "yet another annoying, distracting thing to take me out of my 'flow'"