Considering the backlash against Slack [0], it’ll be interesting to see if Messenger’s model of more “atomic” conversations will create less interruptions. Slack (much like IRC) really contributes to an expectation of continuous conversation throughout the day/night (although not all people deal with it that way). In comparison, Messenger (and other chat apps like WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.) seem to be more designed towards short chats about specific topics, while still allowing for deeper, longer conversations (even larger groups) if needed. Could be a huge win.<p>Beyond that, am I the only one surprised at Live being half-heartedly pushed as part of Workplace? The use-cases they give seem liminal at best, and even the mockups they made are really half-assed. Seems like even Facebook Inc doesn’t believe in Live’s potential in the workplace, which seems narrow-sighted. Sure, Live might not be a great internal corporate tool, but it could be a great replacement for external webinars, webcasts & trainings.<p>[0]: <a href="http://www.slacklash.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.slacklash.com/</a>
(Throwaway because this includes inside baseball theory and it's not appropriate to comment as my usual self)<p>The technical document <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/workplace/account-management/api" rel="nofollow">https://developers.facebook.com/docs/workplace/account-manag...</a> includes an example to create a new user via an authenticated POST request.<p>Previously facebook had a party line that each human had at most one facebook account (which was in contrast to its competitors where some humans had more than one account, e.g. @HistoryInPics), and creating an account required a few more hurdles than a single POST request. Now that businesses can create users it looks like that line has subtly disappeared.<p>If workplace takes off, I would expect faster growth in monthly active users because both the numerator will be larger and now business will be paying people to log in to facebook, and those users will also likely want to glance at their personal accounts, as well.<p>Plus, this move makes it harder for corporate firewalls to block facebook altogether, hits against google suite, and makes browsing facebook at work defensible... super interesting.
I don't get the negativity. This is kinda awesome! News feeds will be good to monitor what's going on across many groups / teams, groups can help your team post and communicate across various topics (same with messaging). Honestly the live video streams on demand is kinda huge; this isn't always something easy for companies to do especially large companies but Facebook can pull this off and make it look great for thousands of users.<p>Overall this seems like a great tool for a workplace. Trouble is it has to compete with Slack and, arguably, things like Confluence.
Their competitor is not Slack but Salesforce. Salesforce is a leader in enterprise CRM. Facebook with apps, messenger and cloud infrastructure is way ahead on tech and usability front. This move if for getting users from entreprise.
Previous job used Yammer. People spent most of their time on the site complaining about the company there. Daily notifications by default containing a ton of garbage. After reading <i>Corporate Confidential</i> by Cynthia Shapiro I figured it was a tool for HR to hold opinions against individuals, so I deleted my account and kept my opinions to myself.
Interesting, there is definitely a market for this. Some of our customers at getstream.io use the API to build their own Facebook style apps for within their organizations. Building your own in-house social networks is of course quite a bit of work. Facebook should be much easier to get up and running.<p>The pricing seems really low for small firms and extremely expensive for larger ones. That sounds like a challenging position for the sales team working on this project.<p>I wonder if this comes with the full range of personalization algorithms for the feed.<p>Also wonder how they will handle the extensive customization that most enterprise customers will request.<p>It's a solid idea though, pretty similar to what Slack is trying to achieve.
Here is a more direct look at the actual features:<p><a href="https://fbatwork.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/workplace_3min_tour.mp4" rel="nofollow">https://fbatwork.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/workplace_3min_...</a>
As others have said, this feels very similar to Yammer. Microsoft has made a strong pivot to enterprise software over the past couple of years, whereas this feels like Facebook's first foray.<p>Although I don't doubt Facebook's agility, I give other enterprise software companies the advantage sheerly due to their head start.
We deployed this last month, taking part in the early access program. On the whole it's been of net cultural benefit for our non-profit. Our staff seem more engaged with the overall mission, better informed about what's going on and more likely to share information that they might have been reticent to share over email.<p>I really like that it's completely separate from my 'personal' Facebook, and it seems with the rebranding from "Facebook at Work" they're trying to emphasize that separation even more.
So now employers are being told to have their employees put business data (potentially even sensitive or secret) on US servers that are "owned" by the US government (see PRISM, etc.), while everybody today knows that NSA surveillance data is being used to gain economic advantages for the country.<p>How stupid do you think the rest of the world is?
So Facebook wants into the space occupied by Slack, SFDC/Chatter and others?<p>Does it potentially interoperate with your company's ecosystem (suppliers, customers, partners)?
What has changed about that market that makes this more appealing to businesses than Yammer? OR what about the product makes it more compelling than Yammer?
The lack of slack/irc style large chatrooms is what killed fb@work adoption at my work. If fb wants to compete I think they will need to add that.
I own 3 retail stores and am excited about this.<p>We have used GroupMe for a few years, but I am dissatisfied with how limited it is. Our team is not sitting at a computer all day and mostly needs to share information efficiently.<p>With 3 locations, it needs to be digital. With 2 shift blocks per day, 7 days per week, it is hard to keep everyone working collaboratively on things like promotions, social media marketing efforts, etc.<p>I also like that it includes the opportunity to work with other companies.<p>I am also a SaaS software vendor for retail store owners like me. I could definitely see integrating this into our app (ResaleAI.com) and had considered Slack and others. So yeah, I signed up to play with it internally first.<p>I am cautiously optimistic.
Let's count.<p>According to <a href="https://workplace.fb.com/pricing/" rel="nofollow">https://workplace.fb.com/pricing/</a>, it's $1-$3 per user.<p>A cheaper server is ~$7k. It means that a company of of 9k personnel ( which is not too small ) will produce $18k per month. That can buy 2 servers per month and maybe cover some of the bandwidth costs.<p>To get a rack of servers - which I believe is the minimum to actually serve a company of this size - you'll need to have them on board for about 2 years (!) before profit starts to flow in. Unfortunately by that time you'll need start replacing the servers, since they have ~3 years of warranty these days.<p>For me this looks like no profit, which could mean two things:<p>1. The pricing is deliberately low, so it's either going to be raised later or it's covered from other parts of the company, and this is a step only to buy into an area currently covered by others.<p>2. The will use the data you provide for other purposes.<p>( 3. Both. )<p>With the first scenario, this will probably not live too long; a few years, maybe, but it's hard for me to believe that they would just pump money into this, just to eliminate others, but you never know.<p>With the second scenario... corporate espionage becomes obsolete.
This is called: despair. Lost of monthly active users, Lost of daily engagement. I bet it'll fail, although everybody automatically think that it Will suceed.
Is it just me or is this somewhat a contradiction?<p><pre><code> "Your Workplace account is separate from your personal Facebook account."
</code></pre>
<a href="https://workplace.fb.com/trust/" rel="nofollow">https://workplace.fb.com/trust/</a><p><pre><code> How do I create a separate username and password for my Workplace account?
To separate your personal account from your Workplace account:
Go to your Security Settings and click Sign Up Manually
Enter and confirm a New Password
Click Unlink Account
Note: Once your Facebook accounts are unlinked you'll have to log in separately to your Workplace account."
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/help/work/1581273578811546?helpref=search" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/help/work/1581273578811546?helpref=...</a>
Down the road, this should also integrate well with their VR plans.<p>There's quite a few companies they will not be able to sign up unless they provide an on premise solution (which I doubt they are interested int) and I have a feeling that even if they push the message hard it'll not be trivial to not have carry over privacy concerns (pretty important for enterprise software).
My gut tells me they should have released this as a completely separate entity to avoid fragmentation (I suppose this would also be the default positioning argument).<p>As an outsider it's also an interesting case of make vs. buy (MS-Yammer vs. Workplace).
This is brilliant. No was is talking about the most interesting part.<p>Marketplace products are the ONLY thing Facebook can do that it's direct competitors can't. And they nailed it.
Yes, just what I want... more crap from Facebook.<p>I've been so very satisfied with how much of my personal data they sell to marketers thus far, I really want them to start tracking me at work too.<p>Hopefully they will pair the launch with an aggressive sales campaign targeted at people in HR so I won't get a say in the matter and it'll just be rolled out for my coworkers without our input. That would be just swell.
The link should really be changed to: <a href="https://workplace.fb.com/" rel="nofollow">https://workplace.fb.com/</a><p>Linking to TC really isn't the best way to deliver what it is, and linking to Workplace directly is a much more 'HN' style submission.
<a href="https://workplace.fb.com/trust" rel="nofollow">https://workplace.fb.com/trust</a><p>Sure. Also:<p><pre><code> Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
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Just keep remembering that as well, please.
<p><pre><code> ... so we don't lock you into a long-term contract
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We simply change the service terms that enable us to share your personal information with WhatsApp or anybody else that we deem appropriate!