Thursday, October 21, 2010

Eh, Yammer; gonnae no.

We use Yammer, the company-internal-use-only version of Twitter. We've been Yammering for a while now. It's cool. We have teams in Scotland, England, Germany, and Texas and Yammer helps provide a virtual version of popping your head over the cube wall and yelling, "ANYONE KNOW HOW TO DO X!?" But today, I got a status email update that made me sigh. And not in a good way. Snippets follow:
Hi Tommy, We noticed you are Following Everyone in your Yammer network.
Ehm, OK. A bit creepy, but fair enough. In these days of Eric Schmidt, we've come to expect such.
Your interest in viewing all the messages in your company is fantastic.
Well thank you. Vote of confidence from my SaaS people. And lest someone accuse me of being Schmidt-like, everyone in Verilab is on the main feed (and there's at least one feed I am not on -- mainly because I don't need to know if the Munich guys are planning another dinner of pancreas fajitas and beer). But anyway, nice as Yammer is being, doesn't it sound like they're setting me up for a "But ..."
Here's the thing:
Ah, see! As Rachel told Josha about "However", that's just just a fancy "But...".
as Yammer networks grow in companies, we've learned a few things. We've learned that as your company network gets bigger, Following Everyone can clutter up your MyFeed and impair your ability to find what's most relevant to you.
Yeah I suppose that could happen in a big company with hundreds of users. But we don't have hundreds. And you know that, don't you, 'cos you already know I'm following them all. No?
On Friday, October 29th, you will stop following everyone in your network. ...
Excuse me?
This way your MyFeed will be focused on the messages that matter to you most.
Excuse me?? You have a "matters most to Tommy" sniffer?
...We understand this is a slight change in how you use Yammer, but we know this will greatly improve your ability to find important information from your colleagues -- and help you get the most from your network.
ExCUSE me?? Would you like to add some bad-word catchers too while you're at it? Maybe add some filters to my email?

Sigh. Yes, yes, I've snipped some bits about how I can get back to my "follow everyone" situation, but why should I have to bother? And exactly what are they going to do anyway, on October 29th, the day of The Great Unfollowing? Are they just going to forcibly unfollow me from everyone in Verilab? If so, is that only because I currently follow everyone -- all 18 of 'em? And could I avoid the problem by temporarily unfollowing one person (and then re-following them on the 30th)? Or are they going to have everyone unfollow everyone no matter who, when or where? Surely not? I'm sure that will piss off a lot of users within large companies who have carefully selected their to-be-followed subset.

Sigh, again. Google. Yammer. All of you. Just gonnae no.
as Yammer networks grow in companies, we've learned a few things. We've learned that as your company network gets bigger, Following Everyone can clutter up your MyFeed and impair your ability to find what's most relevant to you.
Yeah I suppose that could happen in a big company with hundreds of users. But we don't have hundreds. And you know that, don't you, 'cos you already know I'm following them all. No?
On Friday, October 29th, you will stop following everyone in your network. ...
Excuse me? 
This way your MyFeed will be focused on the messages that matter to you most.
Excuse me?? You have a "matters most to Tommy" sniffer? 
...We understand this is a slight change in how you use Yammer, but we know this will greatly improve your ability to find important information from your colleagues -- and help you get the most from your network.
ExCUSE me?? Would you like to add some bad-word catchers too while you're at it? Maybe add some filters to my email?
Sigh.
Yes, yes, I've snipped some bits about how I can get back to my "follow everyone" situation, but why should I have to bother? And exactly what are they going to do anyway, on October 29th, the day of The Great Unfollowing? Are they just going to forcibly unfollow me from everyone in Verilab? If so, is that only because I currently follow everyone -- all 18 of 'em? And could I avoid the problem by temporarily unfollowing one person (and then re-following them on the 30th)? Or are they going to have everyone unfollow everyone no matter who, when or where? Surely not? I'm sure that will piss off a lot of users within large companies who have carefully selected their to-be-followed subset.
Sigh, again. Google. Yammer. All of you. Just gonnae no.

4 comments:

  1. Jessica Halper, Community Manager at YammerOctober 21, 2010 at 1:26 PM

    Thanks for sharing your feedback on the change we're making to the Follow Everyone setting. I understand where you're coming from and wanted to take a moment to shed some light on the decision to remove the Follow Everyone setting. We made this decision based on feedback from users and data analysis. As more users join your network and/or more messages are posted in your network, the My Feed can become quite busy, making it harder to find important and relevant content if you are following everyone. By following individuals instead, you can customize the content and people you see, so that your feed is most relevant to your interests and job. This is the advantage of the follow model - you only see the people and content you subscribe to. You can still view all messages in your network by navigating to the Company Feed, but you'll want to select individuals to follow in order to receive messages in your My Feed. Hope this helps clarify the change.

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  2. It strikes me that "follow everyone" looks easier than follow 5,10,20,50,...100 different people. Stephan

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  3. I thought it was a bit weird too. Hi, you seem to be using our service, we are going to be annoying for no good reason.

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  4. twitter.com/peterkimOctober 22, 2010 at 11:01 AM

    I suspect that database scalability is at the bottom of this. Just like Twitter turned off autofollow.

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