Microsoft announces $1.2bn Yammer buyout

Microsoft is buying internet start-up Yammer for 1.2 billion US dollars (£770 million) in an attempt to bring Facebook-like sharing features to its widely used suite of business software applications.

Yammer specialises in creating private social networks so employees within the same company can keep tabs on what colleagues are working on. That's similar to how Facebook's online social network allows friends and families to track what's happening in each other's personal lives.