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It's because they're using Scala :-)

Why's that? Enterprises want internal social media to promote communications (or at least the appearance of communication) but they don't want to pay for infrastructure (or spend the time) to support it. Enter Yammer.

There's a whole galaxy of apps out there that to consumers seem redundant, but cater to enterprises. Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, etc., etc., etc. all have competitors that are targeting the enterprise market they have either ignored, abandoned or burned.

It's interesting, though. I've watched conference talks from about 5 years ago where Yammer is commonly referred to as a medium for internal communications by SMB types (Business of Software, I think? Sorry, can't find a link at the moment.) Those same recommendations now go to Hipchat. Is their marketing the only difference? (ie. was Yammer once more palatable to small businesses for their marketing, and have they now changed that, with Hipchat filling the void? Or is it more than that?)

I don't know the space well at all, these are just observations from a distance.

It was bought by Microsoft but continues to operate.

What did you expect would've happened to it?