I've been anxiously following the news of WPC in Toronto this week. The keynote didn't hold too much… then we had an explosion of Yammer and SharePoint 15 news…

Jared Spataro Director of Product Management for Microsoft presented at the world wide partner conference providing great insights into the Yammer acquisition and made a number of revelations in relation to Sharepoint 15 social. We follow the twitter streams of Christian Buckley @buckleyplanet (SharePoint MVP) from Axceler and Naomi Moneypenny @nmoneypenny a SharePoint partner with adaptive SharePoint learning tool Synxi. Christian recently posted about the SPYam social experiment.

(RT @davidrauf: Federal regulators have cleared the #Microsoft bid to acquire social networking company #Yammer for $1.2 billion: http://t.co/fn1HwOEa )

Text from the slide

Yammer – Stand-alone Social Networking: Yammer already integrates with SharePoint and Dynamics and over time it will offer more and more connections with SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics and Skype

SharePoint – Social Networking + Collaboration Suite: SharePoint 15 will include new social networking capabilities and Yammer will power the next generation of SharePoint and Office 365 social experiences

(emphasis added by me)

Tweets from @NMoneyPenny

• Why did MS buy Yammer? Best in class enterprise social in cloud. So simple to use. Viral adoption model.-brings people together #spwpc
• 1+1 = 3 means social plus other tech/function makes more than the sum of the parts. MS goal - Win Enterprise Social #spwpc #wpc12 #jared
• Social is deeper and bigger and longer than you think. MS wants to be on forefront. But without 4 trends, its not enough #spcwpc #wpc12
• Connected Experiences way of future. Single platform for managing people & info. Something that appeals to end user, not IT #spwpc #wpc12
• Yammer gives access to new customers without sales ppl. Similar to WSS free download in the past #spwpc #wpc12

SharePoint 15 quotes:

• Next version of SP is all about you, some features hidden in order to present the simplest interface and enable conversations #spwpc #jared
• What does social mean in SP15? Collaboration in order to get tasks completed. That's where the business benefit is. #spwpc #jared
• Hybrid solutions may be able to reach back into LOB data. Licensing per user (simplyfying) likely.. #spwpc #jared
• Positioning of Yammer and SP 15 - many customers will use both. #spwpc #wpc12 pic.twitter.com/Cj7gtDoa (above)
• Expect the 'conversation layer' to be built into Office15 & in apps that ISVs build . @LearningLayer @Synxi similar vision #wpc12 #spwpc

Text Above. (Thanks to @nmoneypenney for tweetpic)

• Yammer: Best in class enterprise social networking – stand-alone social service + in-app social experiences
• Yammer + SharePoint + Office 365 + MS Dynamics
• Yammer Enterprise Social Networking Services

Christian Buckley @buckleyplanet had an excellent stream

• Jared Spataro getting underway, talking about #SharePoint, #Yammer, and #social #WPC12 instagr.am/p/M36MZhlcUG/
• Jared Spataro giving #SharePoint #social context, vision and strategy (thematic level), and #Yammer at #WPC12
• #Yammer was on the path to recreating #SharePoint -- Jared Spataro #wpc12
• #social for the enterprise is not about a feature or a product, but about interaction, productivity between systems and apps #wpc12
• #Social is bigger and deeper and slower than most people think -- Jared Spataro #wpc12
• #Social through #SharePoint was one way to get capabilities to our customers, but not the only way (#Yammer acquisition) - Spataro #wpc12
• Agree! RT @buckleyplanet "Not only does (#Yammer acquisition) protect our business, but it extends our business" @jared_spataro #wpc12

A few other random tweets from the session:

• @MarianoDD: #Yammer enterprise social networking services interwoven with #Dynamics #Office365 #SharePoint #Lync #Skype and more... SOCIAL GOING DEEP!
• @Tuncertan: "#Yammer was set to recreate #Microsoft in the enterprise, before we acquired them. We really liked their roadmap" by Jared Spataro #WPC12
• @wturnhout: "Important reason for buying Yammer: preventing competition to win market for collaboration." Jared Spataro, MS

Thoughts by Joel:

As a Yammer customer prior to the acquisition, I was concerned about where they were going with documents in creating overlap. You don't have to read too many Gartner & Forester reports that were pitting SharePoint against Yammer and visa versa. I've never seen them as competitive, but complimentary. I've thought that this acquisition was a great thing (see my post on 10 reasons why SharePoint and Yammer make sense). I continue to be extremely hopeful for the future of both SharePoint and Yammer.

I've been anxious to unite the SharePoint Community on the Yammer Platform, so they can truly see it's usefulness and see that there isn't a conflict here. As well, it's an awesome platform for conversation, something that twitter has been less useful for especially as more and more of us end up with thousands of followers and as our streams get more volume and get sniped.

If you're in SharePoint join me on #SPYam the SharePoint Yammer Social Experiment (community nearing over 500 members), and on #Yammerites the Yammer Community built for the community by the community.

See you tomorrow…

@jshuey: Tomorrow is "Cloud Tuesday" at the #WPC12 keynote. Get there live or catch it streamed at http://www.digitalwpc.com