Doors Open at Yammer, Invites Go Beyond Company Walls

By Chelsi Nakano (@chelkano) Feb 26, 2010

Any of you out there ever feel like sighing up for Yammer (news, site), but couldn’t because of the required company e-mail address? Well, now you can finally join the party. Yammer Communities, announced yesterday, is a new service for the less formal.

David Sacks, Yammer’s CEO, said this sort of closed-door policy has been one of Yammer’s biggest problems—specifically when users wanted to collaborate with their clients or business partners without inviting them to their company’s internal network.

As of March 1st, Yammer users will be able to click on the new Communities tab to see their linked networks, as well as a Networks tab which displays a user’s number of unread messages:

Yammer Communities

Like Yammer, the new features are free to use, but advanced features will come at a price.
Needless to say, this is a nice move for Yammer. It’s focused, it extends the community, and it doesn’t stray far from Yammer’s original modus operandi.

Moreover, it follows some serious dollars. Yammer started this year with US$ 10 million in funding from the same funders that shelled out US$ 5 million the year before. Meaning? Yammer is on the up, people.

Keep a close watch with us here.