Beleaguered internet firm Yahoo! surprised many on Friday when it announced an end to working from home in the company.

In a memo widely leaked by disgruntled employees, Yahoo!’s Head of HR Jackie Reses explained:

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.

The Intranetizen team are presenting at the Interaction Intranet conference in London this week — the only 2012 conference program to feature all four of us. In another first, we’ll be live-blogging the entire event on our website. Follow the build up, the conference and the slow wind down right here.

This week sees the launch of this year’s Digital Workplace Trends survey, the largest and most detailed study of intranets and enterprise online services.  Now in its seventh year, this annual report has become an invaluable reference tool, providing detailed analysis of technology, management, strategy and governance of all aspects of the digital workplace.

Today the Intranetizens give you five reasons why you should participate in this year’s survey.

Over a year after the UK government launched their campaign to encourage more people to work from home during the Olympics, London Mayor Boris Johnson has gone decidedly off-message. In a speech to Olympic workers last week, he derided home working during the games as a ‘skivers paradise’:

“We all know that is basically sitting wondering whether to go down to the fridge to hack off that bit of cheese before checking your emails again.”

His speech angered Transport for London – who’ve spent millions trying to persuade one-third of Londoners to work from home during the Olympics – and was widely criticised by intranet and digital workplace specialists. Boris isn’t alone, many other managers and Executives hold this view; working from home is like a holiday. But this view is slowly becoming the minority and more and more organisations are seeing the benefits of a digital workplace.

Breaking news this morning suggests Microsoft are in talks to buy the enterprise social network company, Yammer, for a reported $1bn. Whatever the next few weeks brings on this story, there is absolutely no doubt that each company has much to gain from such a partnership. It’s also great news for the millions of intranet users across the globe who use – and are all too often disappointed by - the SharePoint stack. Here’s the intranetizen view

Our 2012 prediction post sparked some healthy debate about the role of news on corporate intranets. A mainstay of intranets since day dot, news has no doubt occupied a significant proportion of your homepage real estate but the time has come to challenge that position. Is news dead-space, or does it justify its inclusion with ease. This week we invite Rachel Miller of AllThingsIC to guest blog with the Intranetizen team to discuss the role of intranet news.