Plenty of people goof off at the office by checking their Facebook accounts. Now Microsoft is paying $1.2 billion for a company that has made Facebook-style social networking just another tool for getting work done.
The all-cash deal for Yammer, a social network service for businesses, is another sign of how consumer technologies that once seemed like toys are reshaping the slower-moving corporate information technology market. Products like the iPhone and iPad have come to be embraced by many big companies after being dismissed earlier by many technology traditionalists inside companies.
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