Twitter-like Co. Wins Top TechCrunch50 Prize

Sam Gustin notes: Yammer, which has been described as Twitter with a business model has won the top prize at the TechCrunch50 start-up conference.

Like Twitter, Yammer is a micro-blogging service, but instead of being designed for the general public, Yammer is designed for companies, as a way for employees to remain up-to-date with what their colleagues are doing.

Instead of asking the question: "What are you doing?" Yammer asks, "What are you working on?"

But unlike Twitter, Yammer has a business model. The service is free to employees, but companies pay to set up corporate accounts that give them the ability to manage their employees, remove users, and set passwords.

Yammer was originally designed by a company called Geni, as an in-house communications tool. It worked so well that the company went public with it.

"We were looking for a tool to keep our company connected. Something like an enterprise version of Twitter would have been ideal, but it didn't exist. So we built our own," said David Sacks, the founder of Geni and Yammer, in a release launching the service. "People get to use great consumer internet sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and Geni, to communicate in their personal lives. Then, when they get to the office, all the software is antiquated and hard to use -- that doesn't make sense. We want to do something about that."

Some 10,000 people and 2,000 organizations signed up for the service when it launched on Monday, according to TechCrunch. Conference organizers Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis awarded Yammer $50,000 for taking the top spot at the conference.

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