Huggers yammers

They’re trying out Yammer at the BBC. Yammer’s a kind of Twitter-clone for use within organisations. It runs secure (SSL) and provides a simple email-based authentication scheme to keep the outsiders out (if you can’t receive an email to your BBC address you can’t join). It’s growing like topsy here, not least because the Corporation’s new technology boss Erik Huggers is using it. He prompted a flood of new registrations on Monday when he posted a link in a video contribution to the BBC’s intranet.

What’s interesting is how he’s using it: his two posts so far have been simple questions about big, strategically important technology issues—he’s got plenty of replies and they’re all visible to other Yammer users. This strikes me as a very powerful application of Twitter-style group interaction: the network is closed enough to permit the discussion of ‘sensitive’ issues while open enough to encourage contributions from all over the organisation. Neat.