Yammer co-founder David Sacks is leaving Microsoft, and the team developing the business-oriented social network will be folded into the Office 365 and Outlook development teams.
Sacks announced the news on Twitter this afternoon, and Microsoft confirmed the changes in a statement to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley.
The company said in the statement: “As we’ve seen the Yammer experience extending throughout Office – giving people new ways to collaborate and work together – it’s now time to bring the Yammer organization together with our Outlook and Office 365 Shared teams as the next logical step in delivering an integrated set of social, collaboration, and communication experiences that enable companies to work like a network.”
The statement added: “We thank David for his commitment to Yammer and Microsoft and wish him the best in his future endeavors.Yammer has grown tremendously since the acquisition in 2012, and is now an integral part of Office 365 and used by more than 500,000 organizations.”
The Yammer acquisition was championed by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in part because of Yammer’s viral enterprise sales model, in which employees often start using the product on their own, giving Yammer a stronger case to strike deals with corporate IT departments.