By Eddie Wrenn

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Yammer: The site has reportedly been purchased for over $1billion

Yammer: The site has reportedly been purchased for over $1billion

You may not be massively familiar with Yammer, a business social network, but Microsoft apparently thinks so much of the site it has agreed to pay $1.2billion for the site.

The Wall Street Journal reported the acquisition - worth about 772million - this morning, although so far neither partner has confirmed the deal.

Yammer, founded in 2008, is strictly for business social networking - and you can only join the site if you have the right 'email' address.

For instance, a Microsoft employee could join the network if they sign up with a '@microsoft.com', which gives a level of validation to members

The site has been nominated for many awards in the past, such as TechCrunch's Best Enterprise Startup and Best New Startup, and it has previously received more than $140million in investment funding.

Microsoft has been very closely embedded with Facebook so far, with the site's search engine Bing integrated in Facebook. However this might be Microsoft's way of embedding itself with the enterprise side of social networking.

Some tech commentators suggest we may end up seeing Yammer integrated into popular Microsoft applications like the Office suite.

According to KnowYourMobile, Yammer - which is free for members unless they wish to upgrade to premium for $5 a month, is used by 200,000 companies including Ford and eBay.

Microsoft also purchased Skype last year for $8.5billion.