Microsoft Garage, the company's "after hours ideas factory," has created a new iPhone app called Forum that applies Tinder's popular "swiping" feature to question-and-answer forums for companies.
Employees can submit questions and the app has a "swiping" feature to vote on posts. Users swipe right to vote up and left to vote down, Microsoft explains in a screenshot that describes Forum's Tinder-like functionality.
The homepage has a similar style to anonymous messaging app Yik Yak.
The app appears to be able to facilitate live Q&As. It's unclear whether the posts are all in-app (i.e. questions and answers can only come from Forum), but it seems that Microsoft is now making a move into building trendy apps that help company-wide communication.
The app, which was released on November 11, is available in the US App Store as a free download.&
Satya Nadella recently gave a keynote address at the Future Decoded conference in London and showed off an "iPhone Pro," loaded with Microsoft apps and services. Forum, while not in wide release, is yet another part of that puzzle and shows Nadella's vision of taking Microsoft products to users rather than expecting users to come to Microsoft.
Forum also fits in with the rush toward trendier enterprise apps, such as Slack, the company-focused messaging client that was recently valued at $2.8 billion (£1.8 billion). By making corporate communication nicer, Slack has grown into a big business with 1.1 million daily users.
Business Insider has reached out to Microsoft to get more details on Forum. We will update the post when we hear back.
