Yammer, a Twitter-like spinout out of high profile Los Angeles genealogy firm Geni.com, has scored the top prize at the TechCrunch50 awards in San Francisco. Yammer offers instant messaging focused on internal corporate communications, and is the result of work by engineers at Geni. Geni is the online, Web 2.0-style genealogy and social networking web site headed up by former PayPal founder David Sacks; the firm is venture backed by Charles River Ventures and Founders Fund. READ MOR

Top officers of some of the leading social media websites and tools (including Facebook, MySpace and Yammer) will be on the Panel, and there will be panelists from the worlds of media sharing platforms (Pringo), online advertising (Stun Media) and law (Greenberg Glusker), the latter to highlight risks relating to such issues as corporate blogging and privacy. Speakers: * Jason Oberfest, Senior Vice President, Business Development of MySpace * Paul Ollinger, West Coast Vice President of Sales of Facebook * Sam Cimino, Sales Manager SW, YouTube * Majid Abai, CEO

Tags: rubicon project headquarters rubicast rubirewards office culture communication cultural values yamme I decided to try doing a video blog post. Here is a tour that I did of the Rubicon Project headquarters and all of the thought that we have put into things like culture, communication, efficiency, team development (and a little fun)... We have woven these things into our environment and I thought I'd share our thinking with you.Some highlights

Los Angeles-based Yammer, the corporate focused instant messaging service spun out of Geni.com, said today that the firm is updating its service and adding a new groups feature. According to Yammer, its new Groups feature allows messages and members on the site to be managed around specific groups within companies. Yammer launched to much fanfare in September at TechCrunch50, taking the instant messaging The new feature allows companies using the firm's service to subdivide members into specific groups, rather than to an entire company. Yammer said the new Groups feature and

West Hollywood-based Geni, and instant messaging spinout Yammer have both raised $5M in funding from the firms' existing backers, Charles River Ventures and the Founders Fund, according to regulatory filings and reports. Geni is a high profile, family social networking and genealogy site headed by former Paypal co-founder David Sacks, and Yammer is the Twitter-like instant messaging spinout of Geni, focused on businesses. The details of the Geni funding were first reported by PEHub; with details on Yammer's latest round reported on TechCrunch this morning. Requests for comment

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Our interview this morning is with David Sacks, CEO of Geni.com, an online family tree and social networking site, as well as Yammer, the instant messaging startup spun out of Geni.com at TechCrunch50. We sat down with David to catch up on what Geni and Yammer are doing, plus got his insights into entrepreneurship and the Paypal mystique. Thanks Now, let's talk about Yammer. David has a unique perspective on the Southern California technology environment, having been the COO of PayPal before its acquisition by EBay, and having had the full Silicon Valley experience. Thanks

West Hollywood-based Yammer , the corporate microblogging site inspired by Twitter, is moving from the Los Angeles area to Silicon Valley, according to founder David Sacks. Sacks said that Geni, which spun out Yammer, remains in West Hollywood. Yammer provides a Twitter-like corporate microblogging platform, essentially a version of Twitter restricted to specific corporate domains. According to Sacks, the entire firm--including its engineering team and executive staff--is moving to the Bay Area, to be closer to the startup scene in Silicon Valley. Sacks revealed the move

No reason for the downtime was given, however, the downtime at Geni paralleled a similar, more widely reported downtime issues at sister firm Yammer. Instant messaging service Yammer--which recently moved to the Bay Area--reported its services came down due to "hardware issue within the supervisory engine of a switch". Tags: geni yammer downtime network issues family tre Los Angeles-based Geni , the online family tree and genealogy web site started by David Sacks, was hit by unexpected downtime Tuesday and today, the firm told its users Wednesday afternoon. According to Geni,

The new microblogging feature puts Central Desktop in competition with another local startup, Yammer, which has created its own enterprise and business focused take on Twitter. Tags: twitter microblogging desktop central saas software yamme Pasadena-based Central Desktop has jumped into the enterprise micro-blogging area, saying Monday that it has launched a new tool which allows companies to use Twitter-style updates within the firm's project management software. Central Desktop runs a software-as-a-service product which allows business teams to share documents, track schedules, and