I’ve been thinking a lot about Enterprise Social Networks recently, and so should you if the figures about the potential size of the market over the next few years are to be believed ($6.4bn by 2016). The news that Yammer has been acquired by Microsoft for $1.2bn therefore shouldn’t come as any surprise. Whether the same can be said for Yammer is another question. That’s because, long before the deal went through, I was thinking about the potential of a Twitter/Yammer tie up. Clearly Yammer and Twitter won’t happen. Danny Whatmough.

There's perhaps the most popular one - Yammer , and then there are solutions such as SalesForce Chatter , MangoSpring , Cisco Quad , Confluence , and even build-your-own solutions such as Status.net. However, a new competitor has just entered this space that I think has the potential to shake up this saturated market, and it's a big name, with big pockets and a whole lot of existing enterprise clients. It should if you're a user of Yammer or SalesForce Chatter or any of the other popular business collaboration suites. The Power of Circles. Sound familiar? Hangouts.