Social media over the past decade has become a crucial feature of our lives, expanding our horizon through collaboration and inspiration.  Such presence was needed in the business world to allow teams to work on the go to increase efficacy and communication.  In 2001 Microsoft SharePoint became the first enterprise social media, allowing members on a team to chat, share documents, etc., all on the generic Microsoft office platform.

 

 

 

SharePoint has come out with numerous versions and updates of over the past twelve years, the most noteworthy being SharePoint 2010.  The 2010 SharePoint was groundbreaking, at the time, with useful features and functions that were new to the enterprise social media.

 

 

 

The only issue with the 2010 version of SharePoint was that, soon after being released it gained competition from Yammer, a similar enterprise social media.  Yammer was far more advanced then SharePoint and was much easier to set up then SharePoint.

 

 

 

So, what most companies started to do was use a combination of the two social account in their communication process, as you can imagine the two began to be hard to distinguish.  Yammer was much more efficient and had an overall better flow to it where as SharePoint still had the original Microsoft Office layout.

 

 

 

Microsoft released SharePoint 2013 at the beginning of the year, and bought Yammer.  So clearly they monopolized the market and have become the sole enterprise social account.  The new 2013 SharePoint has received outstanding reviews by companies across the globe, as it has become an essential component to a company’s communication success.  Some of the new features that SharePoint 2013 has to offer consist of document workflow, document retention, and document ratings.  All the new features allow for greater customization and organization.  So, SharePoint is an essential tool to be using in your work place, to increase, communication, collaboration, sharing, and expanding.