The evolution of technology often moves from business use to casual consumers’ daily lives, but social media tends to move in the opposite direction. Social networking is now becoming company policy, reports the New York Times, through internal social networks specific to the workplace. Microscope company Nikon Instruments and computer security company Symantec both have internal social networks, used by employees to handle company business—inter-office memos have entered the 21st century.

Yammer is a company that has developed internal social media applications for companies. It is like a “Facebook for business.” However Salesforce.com built a similar service called Chatter and they even bought a Super Bowl commercial for it. Interestingly Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff praised Yammer at the TechCrunch50 conference before launching Chatter. Check out the video above. [BusinessInsider]