Microsoft will shortly begin a new microblogging service named Office Talk, which aims to employees to briefly share information, such as in Twitter.
As said in the Microsoft Office Labs blog, this concept will be to test the basic capabilities of microblogging in business environments, enabling employees to express their thoughts, activities and information that may be valuable for anyone who may be interested.
For the Redmond Company, OfficeTalk is not a product, but is a research project focused on where people can learn to use social networking tools at work and also know how companies and organizations can make use of this service.
Twitter is also hoping to be Twitter for businesses. And, for those who want something that runs on their own servers, there’s already Yammer, which has been around since 2008.
The challenge, says Office Labs general manager Chris Pratley, isn’t building a microblogging service. The features there are pretty basic and straightforward. The real issue, he said, is figuring out the necessary things to make it a service people want to use.
