Twitter and Facebook are the leading social networking sites at the moment, so it's never surprising when there’s a copy cat. Microsoft Labs has been testing a microblogging service for businesses. The service, “Office Talk”, mimicks everything Twitter does: hashtags, “@” mentions, messages length of 140 characters or less, and even has an built-in URL shortener.
According to Microsoft Labs, the tests they are conducting are to learn how people might use social networking tools at work and in what ways both people and organizations realize their value.
While it might seem like Microsoft is only playing the copycat, Terrence O’Brien from Switched argues that Windows' maker has to enter the market if it wants to keeps it's Office line competitive.
“Microblogging is quickly becoming a powerful way for informal communication and, understandably, Microsoft wants to make sure it has a competitive product for businesses to adopt internally. Other entrants already have a head start: Google Buzz will be offered in a standalone version through Google Apps and Yammer has been offering custom private microblogging to businesses since 2008. Then, there is the true power player, Twitter, which is actively trying to attract business customers. Microsoft does have one major advantage though; the ability to easily integrate OfficeTalk with Exchange, Sharepoint, or Outlook, which could be a killer feature in a corporate environment.”
(via Switched)
While this isn't at the scale of say, Kraft acquiring Cadbury or even Apple picking up Lala there's been some M&A (that's mergers and acquisition for those not up on business-speak) action in the realm of the teen tycoons. The 17 year old CEO of Teens in Tech, a teen blogging community, Daniel Brusilovsky [@danielbru on twitter] has announced the acquisition of the site Yazzem.
Yazzem, based in Michigan and founded by two 14 year olds, is a topic-based microblogging service. A user starts a topic thread in 200 characters or less and can carry on a back and forth with other users. Think of twitter with an attention span. Brusilovsky plans on integrating Yazzem's tech and features into the Teens in Tech service, which has finally emerged from private alpha this week.
Yazzem was acquired for the princely sum of $15,000, or 1.2 million XBox Live points.
Teens in Tech will be hosting a conference in San Francisco come February 6th at the Google offices in San Francisco. Who's laughing now?
[via TechXav]
