14 DAY TRIAL // Obayoo, a new free service launched earlier this month, aims to bring micro-blogging and file sharing to enterprises for internal use, is available as a SaaS and has some features and options businesses might find very useful.
“Obayoo is a new kind of enterprise collaboration tool, built on the idea that communicating and sharing information within your company or organization can be fast, easy and productive. And maybe even fun,” the service representatives said.
The team behind the project aims to bring all the advantages of a micro-blogging platform to enterprises while adjusting the product to their specific needs. Twitter can prove a powerful tool but some companies may want greater control over the services they use. There are other similar tools out there, like Yammer or Socialcast, but Obayoo has some specific advantages that may set it apart from the rest.
The new micro-blogging service has a clean interface, very similar to Twitter's, but adds some useful features like groups, threaded replies or status updates, which can include multiple files and can be shared with everyone or only some groups. Also, all the links, images, files and hashtags can be saved and accessed at a latter date.
Being an enterprise service it has a focus on security and privacy. Businesses can sign up for the service using their company's email address and creating an account. After the first account has been created, users can invite colleagues with the same email domains but also clients or others from outside the company. However, there are other security features like the ability to use SSL or to set a fixed IP range for users.
An interesting addition is the possibility to use a variety of outside sources for content. Users can add RSS feeds, or follow specific Twitter users or searches but also content from Google News and blog searches to the stream. All of these options may prove valuable for a business using the service but it remains to be seen whether companies will be able to make the best of them.