Enterprise social network Yammer has unveiled a new version of its desktop application that will allow users to access threaded conversations, notifications, direct messages and much more.

Yammer, which launched a new iPhone/iPad app last week, allows employees of a business to communicate and share information internally. With the the launch of Yammer Desktop 2.0, Yammer aims to put more functionality into the hands of users who prefer the desktop app.

With threaded conversations, you will be able to easily follow conversations, with replies being displayed under the original message. Through notifications, it will be easier to keep a close eye on new messages, @mentions, replies, followers and more. You can view your notifications on a separate tab so that you do not miss any important messages.

Also new to Yammer Desktop is direct messages, which mean that you can communicate privately with colleagues. Much like with Facebook Messages, you can opt to sent a direct message to more than one person at the same time, and you can add colleagues to the conversation whenever you please.

The topics feature will allow you to create, edit and use topics to tag content with, making it easier to curate your Yammer feed and encourage discovery of relevant conversations that are taking place within your Yammer network. Lastly, a document viewer will let you access, edit and comment on any documents that appear on your Yammer feed through a browser-based viewer.

“The Desktop application is one of the most popular ways users access Yammer,” said David Sacks, founder and CEO of Yammer. “With threaded conversations and the notifications tab, the new version greatly improves the user experience and includes a more robust feature set that better services our customers’ communication and collaboration needs.”

It appears that the most significant updates here are the threaded conversations and notifications (and not just because Sacks mentioned those in particular). The first will make it easier to keep track of all comments related to a discussion, while the second will ensure that you are kept up-to-date with all of the most important events relevant to you in your Yammer network. That said, I would imagine that the addition of direct messages to the desktop app will also prove popular among Yammer users.

You can download the new version of Yammer Desktop now.