Microsoft gives more details on Yammer integration

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Yammer CEO David Sacks shaking hands with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last year.

Credit: Reuters

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Microsoft today offered some more details on how it will integrate Yammer, the social sharing service it acquired last year, into its other products

According to a blog post by SharePoint director Jared Spataro, here's what the company plans:

• Office 365 customers will be able to replace the SharePoint news feed with a Yammer news feed this summer. In a subsequent update this fall, Office 365 customers will get single sign-on to both services, and the interfaces will be slowly integrated -- for instance, users will be able to edit Office Web Apps documents from within Yammer. 

• A Yammer app in the SharePoint store will allow SharePoint customers to embed a Yammer feed directly into a SharePoint site. It will also come out this summer.
• Every 90 days, Microsoft will update Office 365 to integrate with other services. Here, Microsoft was circumspect, but it sounds like Skype and Lync will be an important part of these updates as well.

Long term, Microsoft strongly hinted that Yammer will replace the SharePoint news feed for most customers -- Spataro wrote: 

Facebook and Twitter Rule The Enterprise, Too
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In my customer meetings over the last few months, people have often asked, "What should I use for social?  Yammer or the SharePoint newsfeed?"  My answer has been clear: Go Yammer!  Yammer is our big bet for enterprise social, and we're committed to making it the underlying social layer for all of our products.  It will power the social experiences in SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics, and more. 

It looks like Microsoft will keep the SharePoint news feed alive for customers who simply refuse to run Yammer because they don't trust a cloud service, but it's definitely de-emphasizing it.

For more details, read the blog post here.

Matt Rosoff is the editorial director of CITEworld. Read Matt's bio