I don’t normally provide product reviews, nor does the blog, but I’ve been enamored so much with one product lately that I have to shout its praises. Doubtless, you’ve heard of the phenomenon known as Twitter. It’s the micro-blogging service that has techy and non-techy 30+ year olds scrambling to figure out. One problem I have with Twitter, however, is its failure to localize–that is, its inability to maintain a consistent back and forth Twitter stream with only those that, in legal parlance, are in my immediate  jurisdiction.There are pros and cons to that, of course, but I’m not here to weigh them.

I’m here to talk about Yammer. Yammer localizes, but on a much smaller scale. In techy parlance, it’s the scale of your domain. For those of us at the MSBA, it means the domain of mnbar.org.  Here’s how it works. Yammer is like many other micro-blogging services (yes, there are others besides Twitter), in that it has a central feed of your posts as well as a running feed of posts from those you choose to follow. But, with the exception of “guests” you can add to your Yammer group, you are limited to following and being followed by those people who share your e-mail domain. Thus, the community of people you follow are almost entirely those with whom you work.

What’s so great about that? For one, it puts us all on one localized and exclusive feed and, as we work on team-oriented projects, it gives us a way to communicate quickly across all departments about project updates and issues. Second, by using “tags” we can organize our posts and feeds into easily followed and organized categories. Tags are created just like they are in Twitter, with the pound sign (#) followed by the category you wish to tag. So, for instance, in the following screenshot, I’ve tagged my post with #blog, telling others in our group that I’m working on this blog.

Thus, any replies to my post are also organized under the blog category and, in threaded view, follow a nice consistent order. Same goes for other categories, such as #practicelaw or #planning or even #ideas.  For lawyers, it could mean tags that relate to case numbers or clients or even legal issues (#res-judicata or #rule-37).

As you can also see from the screenshot, Yammer has built-in RSS feeds that come into your Yammer feed from any source, including blogs, Twitter terms, or, as we have added, the news feed from the Minnesota Courts (though it doesn’t handle authenticated feeds, which I wish it did). In addition, you can organize people into groups, make those groups private or public, and then view what amount to sub-feeds that relate only to those in that group (e.g., “Management” or “Law Clerks”).

When I explain Yammer, I inevitably get the response of “what’s the difference between that and e-mail?” It’s a good question, and this is usually my answer: it’s much more efficient, intuitive  and organized than e-mail because of the use of tags, the ability to follow select Yammer team members, and the ability to have selected RSS feeds show up automatically in your personal feed. It also collects and organizes any files you attach, as well as any links or images you provide in a post, which makes for a great though basic file and link sharing feature. More importantly, and for those already drowning in e-mail, it operates to remove potentially hundreds of e-mails from your inbox that may be the most critical: those from your colleagues.  It also has built in mobile device interaction (including iPhone and Blackberry applications), a desktop application, and even a Firefox extension that works to notify you of Yammer messages within Firefox. And , as I write this, Yammer has added third-party applications that allow interaction with ping.fm, Android, and other social network media (though I have yet to try these).

What’s it cost? Like many web-based services today, it’s free for a bare bones account that does the basic and essentially gets you hooked. But it’s worth paying a $1.00 per month per member fee to get added features for a basic account, such as the ability to delete and manage posts and members, to receive and send mobile SMS, to add guests outside of your domain, and to add password and other usage policies.  (Yammer recently added a premium version at $5.00/member/month that allows for multi-domain networks and other ‘enterprise’ level solutions).