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Yammer (News - Alert) is getting an upgrade, thanks to its partnership with Kanjoya. The cloud-based enterprise social networking software can now measure sentiment and emotion in employee posts, gauging the general “mood” among employees and reactions to various events and announcements.

Thanks to Kanjoya’s Crane software, Yammer customers can sign up for a feature in their administrative console to detect various moods in regards to individual topics. It can be divided among locations and departments, or analyze the overall sentiment.

 For instance, if a new BYOD policy is announced, then many employees may be pleased, but the IT staff will be less than thrilled at having to implement new software. The Crane software can detect these reactions in posts through Yammer, indicating which branches are pleased and which are displeased.

Administrators can search for keywords, thus tracking reactions for various subjects, and plot graphs or generate word clouds as well as tracking the influence each participant has. It can detect around 80 different emotions, from the neutral “meh” to exuberant “woohoo!” or melodramatic “noooo!” and everything in-between.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about this. It can be very useful for judging reactions, such as how employees like new policies or if “Casual Friday” is going too far, but it can also seem a little invasive. Still, if you’re using the company’s ESN on company time, then they have a right to know what’s being said, and it’s likely to be more effective than an ordinary suggestion box.

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