Microsoft's Yammer adds translation functions

Microsoft said Thursday its Yammer social network for internal corporate communications would add message translation capabilities to help firms with multilingual operations.

"Removing language as a barrier to cross-company collaboration can be a competitive game changer for multinational organizations. It opens a world of possibilities," said Adam Pisoni, Yammer's co-founder who is now a Microsoft executive.

"This is another example of Yammer's accelerated innovation following the Microsoft acquisition we're able to use Microsoft Translator to quickly deliver additional value to customers."

Microsoft announced last June it was buying the startup for $1.2 billion, to bring enterprise social networking to Microsoft's Office division.

Yammer was launched in San Francisco in 2008 and enables companies to make private networks that let employees communicate Twitter-style while keeping exchanges away from public viewing.

At the time of the announcement, Yammer had more than five million users, including workers at 85 percent of the Fortune 500 companies.

Microsoft said that it planned to promote adoption of Yammer's service tied to complementary offerings of software or services such as SharePoint, Skype, and Office 365.