To Tweet or to Yammer... is that the question?

As those of you who know me, I’m a fan of 1000wattconsulting.com. Marc Davison and Brian Boero consistently offer clear and thoughtful discussion about Web 2.0 topics (especially how it relates to real estate) through their blog. Marc’s post on December 2^nd, The trouble with Twitter , addresses some meaningful concerns.

Are you cranking out gibberish, or contributing meaningful communication?

A few of us in my daily work reality have been playing with Twitter for several months. I’m still not confident I understand its real value, but I certainly feel its allure. We’re using it at work to keep in touch. Between conversations I enjoy hearing from a marketing rep that a meeting went well, a client made it to a tradeshow, or one of my team members found a great new resource on the web. We don’t use it as a source for news like what’s happening with the Big Three bailout.

We’ve all kind of gravitated towards simple more personal communications. It’s a great way to be there for someone when they need a “rah rah”… We find it a helpful way to get a quick message out to each other that the website has been updated, a reminder that today is launch day for program X, or one of our clients just enthusiastically chimed in with “I finally found a buyer for my listing, YEAH!”

I have been known after a long week to share on a Saturday ‘getting haircuts and shopping at the mall with my 16 year old daughter.’ When I get these kind of messages from my group it’s a welcome chuckle, and it’s good to know they aren’t always working and are having some fun.

We discovered Yammer recently. It’s like your own private business Twitter. If you have a team and would like an easy Tweetn’ like way to keep the group in touch with each other, this might be the program for you.

Membership is free for the basic edition. Just sign up and create an account. Your email addresses will need to be the same (ex: @ticortitle.com). Then simply email your team with invites. You can keep the setup a general membership and/or break it out into different sub-groups. At first glance, I think it would be great for smaller teams.

If you want to create a tag so you can thread the conversation, just put ‘#’ in front of a word and it becomes a tag, like #ITMarketing. Like Twitter you can personalize it with your picture. You can also upload files and pictures to share with the group.

The free version has its limitations. If you upgrade to get more admin tools, you’ll pay $1 per month per person in the network. We’re still playing with the free version. (I love free.) I’ll keep you posted.