Yammer raises $25M for business-based network

The social networking site for businesses and their employees is backed by U.S. Venture Partners

Enterprise social networking site Yammer announced Tuesday that it has closed a $25 million Series C round, bringing its total financing to $40 million since launching in 2008.  The round was led by U.S. Venture Partners, with help from Emergence Capital, Charles River Ventures, and Founders Fund.

The site is like a Facebook for businesses, back when Facebook only allowed users with a college email account to join.  Yammer only allows individuals with a valid business email account to join, at which point they can communicate and collaborate via any number of the site’s features, including enterprise microblogging, direct messaging, groups, communities, company directories, and uploads.  The site appears to provide a convenient solution to the awkward dilemma of trying to figure out whether or not to friend a coworker on Facebook.  (It’s a bad idea.  Don’t do it.)

Some 90,000 companies use Yammer, including such big names as Groupon, Cisco, UNICEF, Eventbrite, LG, Mashable, Thompson Reuters, and more.  The site has over 1.5 million users in 136 countries, including employees at 80% of the Fortunate 500.  Yammer plans to use the new capital to quickly scale its operations, triple the size of its engineering team, and beef up its sales organization.  Additionally, the company has plans to open offices in Europe and Australia.

"The consumerization of the enterprise is happening in a big way and Yammer sits right in the middle of this major trend," said Mamoon Hamid, principal at U.S. Venture Partners, in a prepared statement. "Yammer's growth has been explosive and they've proven the value of the freemium model. The new infusion of capital will help the company scale to meet the considerable market demand."

Along with the latest round of fundraising, Yammer is also announcing the addition of new executives David Stewart and Mark Woolway to its management team.  Stewart is joining the company as vice president of product management.  Previously, he was the senior director of product at Playdom, where he focused on virality and user acquisition.  Woolway comes to the company from Clarium Capital, where he was the managing director, following his stint at PayPal as vice president of corporate development.  Woolway is joining Yammer as vice president of corporate affairs. 

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