14 ms·

Facebook at Work

449 points by nichodges 11y ago

bobby_9x 11y ago
More and more, I push for more in-house and self-hosted services for things like this. If I‘m using this as a regular workflow, I want to know that it won‘t go away one day.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- matt_wulfeck 11y ago
  The problem with those self-hosted products is you're the person on hook to monitor, update, and maintain them. Much easier to let it be somebody else problem, especially since this stuff is like a AAA service.
  - pgwhalen 11y ago
    In some industries though, self-hosted is a requirement.
- copperx 11y ago
  What you really want is a product you can pay for.
citricsquid 11y ago
Any theories on why they're using Wordpress.com VIP for this?
- personjerry 11y ago
  Fast and easy solution that doesn't seem to fail any of their needs?
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    Unless their needs include security.....
- caleblloyd 11y ago
  Because someone from marketing made the site, not someone from engineering
  - cm2012 11y ago
    Which is a good thing, in this case.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mdrovdahl 11y ago
  FB currently hosts ~15 sites with WordPress.com VIP
voynich61 11y ago
Never has it been more apparent that morality doesn't come into the equation for Facebook.
- jdoliner 11y ago
  Is there something glaringly immoral about this?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
samstave 11y ago
Uh... Is this an attack on Slack? I have so many things to say about this but the last time I said anything anti-F B on H N I got lawyers against me. Please god people don't use this. Edit: I'm going to qualify my sentiment. FB thinks that "making the world more connected" is a good thing (TM) -- and in an utopian sense that may be true... But FB is not utopian. See the fucking onion article. You all know the one. The world doesn't need to be "more connected" --- it needs to be more conscious --- and very little work by many many startups are "making the world a better place" The fact is that the world is still just as dark as always. Slavery is up, consumption begets inequality and the worlds economies are all about consumption. How about creating an economy based on provisioning and providing. But because fuck you, that's why, is the philos of the day. Zuck needs to read his letter to his daughter and then read that same letter to one who has zero relation or zero connection to FB. If the only person he is committed to making the world a better place for is his child through his tax shelter, then we will truly know the morality of FB. Good fucking luck. /rant
- quadrature 11y ago
  why shouldn't this be used ?
  - dreamdu5t 11y ago
    Because Facebook has no intention of keeping the service around if it isn't successful. Whereas with Slack, it's actually their business and already proven profitable/successful.
    - nness 11y ago
      That logic makes zero sense. "Success" and profitability are only states, you aren't guaranteed either forever. Just as Slack took time to establish both — time which Facebook will also need to establish them both for themselves.
- wnmurphy 11y ago
  What happened with the lawyers? That seems entirely unreasonable.
personjerry 11y ago
I don't really see the need for this, since the things you usually do on Facebook are not the same things you would do at a workplace community.
- josho 11y ago
  You forgot that you are the product being sold. This gives fb whole new layers of demographic data to sell to their customers.
- jonathankoren 11y ago
  It's segmented with two accounts. An FB@Work account and your regular FB account. Basically, everything at FB is run through FB. (e.g. Groups for everything!) Someone decided that because FB loves FB so much, and a billion people use it, others would want to run their business through FB as well. Now that there's post and comment search, it's not useless as a repository of knowledge, but at the same time I have a hard time believing that others will love FB@Work as much as FB loves FB@Work.
jdoliner 11y ago
I clicked this hopeful that Facebook had made a new product tailored to the needs of an office. Instead it seems like they recently decided that their existing product just happens to already be the perfect product for the office and rebranded it. I don't buy this at all, teams don't actually collaborate by sending each other green giraffe stickers.
- onewaystreet 11y ago
  People who use Slack do.
  - jdoliner 11y ago
    To clarify it's not that emoticons can't be part of how people communicate at work. I just couldn't really believe those exchanges they were showing there. Slack puts the whole conversation right in front of you and makes link and searching really comfortable. The fb share box really isn't meant for that.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Slack charges. When is "Work" going to end up like Parse?
    - carb 11y ago
      Facebook At Work is not a free service.
    - benatkin 11y ago
      Maybe they killed Parse because it wasn't all about keeping people in their walled garden, and enabled people to duplicate features of facebook. It could be in line with what they did with FBML & facebook apps.
    - dsl 11y ago
      My guess is "Work" is a ploy to get Facebook un-blocked by corporate firewalls. The business functionality has already existed (since FB uses its own platform internally), so its comparatively minor in engineering effort.
eCa 11y ago
> For companies who get things done http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/is-it-a-company-who-or-a-company-that http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/is-it-a-c...
- tristanj 11y ago
  Yes it's bad grammar but I'm pretty sure the phrasing is intentional. They're using an anthropomorphism, a common UX trend these days. Apple uses it in all their iPad and iPhone ads (e.g. Do more with iPhone). A while back a reporter called out Apple on their un-grammatical naming and an exec justified it saying that leaving out the "a/an/the" on their products made them seem more alive and less replaceable. It shows there's a deeper connection to the product and Apple wants to convey that message to their customers. So yes, it's bad grammar but it's here to stay.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
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- jonathankoren 11y ago
  What company uses LI for internal communication?
  - fuzzywalrus 11y ago
    While there's nothing explicit in the demo video, screenshots like the following infer LinkedIn like behavior between people: https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/facebook-at-work/assets/img/slidefour-devices.png https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/facebook-at-work/ass... https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/facebook-at-work/assets/img/quote-1.png https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/facebook-at-work/ass...
runn1ng 11y ago
I just don't believe having Facebook opened at work will in any way increase my productivity.
andy_ppp 11y ago
Something about this creeps me out. Next up "Facebook staring at you watching you sleep".
felixrieseberg 11y ago
I don't see a clear answer on whether or not Facebook will analyze or use the data in any way. It is said that a company can "control" the data, but I'd like to know how Facebook will handle the data.
tyre 11y ago
I will not use a product supported by advertising for internal communication. The demographic data they would mine would be invaluable to them, but for a company would be unconscionable to give to a third party. Especially one so historically lax about privacy. You can mine my social life all you want, but when it comes to business, get the hell away.
- untog 11y ago
  I will not use a product supported by advertising for internal communication. It does not.
- guycook 11y ago
  "You can mine my social life all you want, but when it comes to business, get the hell away." I like it when people accidentally summarise life in 21st century capitalism on HN
  - ecthiender 11y ago
    Couldn't help but laugh out loud. Well said!
- carlosdp 11y ago
  Facebook at Work isn't going to be free. I also highly doubt they'll be touching any of the FB@Work data for mining, just like Google Apps for Business doesn't mine business accounts or serve ads.
a_l_e_x 11y ago
I don't want a social network like Facebook at work. This takes all of the worst parts of Slack and makes them worse.
freshyill 11y ago
So is this supposed to be an alternative to Yammer? Because that thing is terrible. Not just the implementation, but the very idea. Normal Facebook at least has some element of fun to it. What's the purpose of the same thing, but for work? To share a bunch of the same "professional" garbage that people share on LinkedIn and maybe try to look smart in front of the boss? Seriously, who actually wants to use something like this?
codesushi42 11y ago
Really? After Slack, Yammer, and LinkedIn this is all they have to offer? Totally uninspiring. DOA.
nness 11y ago
Why on earth does this site attempt to remotely log you in to WordPress? It was completely jarring to have the WordPress bar appear above the site. EDIT: Seems they are using the WordPress.com VIP service. That explains that.
pandatigox 11y ago
As @voynich61 has mentioned, there's something incredibly morally murky about this product. The first thing that came to my head is stalking. Before Facebook "Work", the workplace was relatively safe. As long as you don't provide any info, such as phone numbers, personal email address, and had some pretty good privacy settings, you could deflect some potential stalkers at work. For the sake of the argument, I'm going to assume that with Facebook Work, you login with your normal Facebook account, because, you know, ease of signing up, etc. And I'm going to further assume that this "work" thing will also make a copy of your profile picture, bio details, etc. With all this information, it's not going to be hard for co-workers to start harassing you online. And since it's the same workplace, you'll soon have to rebuffing them both offline and online. Additionally, employers will easily find your personal information, such as things you did on the weekend, embarrassing photos that shouldn't be shared around the workplace, etc. While I sort-of (not really) congratulate Facebook on trying out some new moves, there are some lines that shouldn't be crossed, and lately, Facebook has been crossing all of them. Free Basics, is the latest example that comes to mind. I know in the past Facebook has had a "hacker" mentality when making new products, but for a company as big as Facebook, I wish they gave their products a bit more thought before attempting them.
- NDizzle 11y ago
  Wow. Where do you work that you worry about things like that? Why do you continue to work there?!
  - prostoalex 11y ago
    That was my thought too - with all of the implied harassment, offline bullying, sleuthing and shaming going on perhaps there are grander issues than Facebook launching a corporate product.
- victorvation 11y ago
  You create a new account. It's mentioned in the first line of marketing copy. > It's easy to get started. You just create a new Facebook at Work account to connect with coworkers.
ivanecky844 11y ago
In direct competition with Slack, let's see how this panes out.
benatkin 11y ago
I'm pretty sure this is going to be big. I think Slack is so successful not just because of the chat interface and the integrations, but because people reliably receive notifications, messages can contain attachments that are presented in a helpful way, and because it has good ways of organizing groups. Facebook has everything but the chat interface and the integrations. I don't see any reason for them not to add these.
- ossreality 11y ago
  This is just fucking hilarious. You know what gives me reliable notifications? You know what lets me view my attachments in whatever way I want? You know what lets me organize/tag/correlate my messages the way I want? OMG ITS EMAIL. In 3 years everything is going to bitch about IM the same way they bitch about email. And they're the ones that asked for it.
- untog 11y ago
  But Slack is a chat service. I'm struggling to imagine what I would ever want to see in my Work News Feed.
  - rokhayakebe 11y ago
    Think knowledge base, all that information trapped inside Email which requires people to answer the same question 1000 times. Each one incomplete.
    - untog 11y ago
      You want to solve that? Think "Wiki", not "News Feed".
  - dchuk 11y ago
    It appears that this Facebook Work thing also includes a private work chat system somewhat comparable to Slack.
  - skewart 11y ago
    I take it you've never used Yammer, which was created as "Facebook for work" seven years ago. The Yammer news feed is actually a great way to stay generally aware of what's going on in your company across lots of different groups or functions. I'm an engineer and its nice to see what sales and customer support are worried about from time to time and occasionally chimein when I can be helpful. At my company we use chat for quick, immediate conversations, and Yammer for bigger, more in depth conversations about product or architecture or various business tactics. I imagine Facebook for Work would happily fill a very similar role to Yammer, sitting comfortably alongside chat. Of course, they'll probably have a much easier time with distribution given the brand recognition.
rahulshiv 11y ago
Anybody else having issues with the video on their main page? It doesn't load for me on Chrome.
whitegrape 11y ago
I thought this was new, but apparently they announced working on it around June 2014 and even had the apps around since early 2015 which would explain how the Google Play app already has 60k reviews... Discovered this while looking for comparisons to Salesforce's Chatter: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebookwork-vs-salesforce-chatter-vincent-rochebrun-rodriguez https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebookwork-vs-salesforce-ch...
kin 11y ago
All of the use cases for this, Slack more or less solves, which Events being a Slack integration away. That being said, outside of the HN Community and outside of Tech savvy companies who know and prefer Slack, it's not completely useless. It's sure as hell better than Email groups and Calendar events in my opinion.
- eva1984 11y ago
  People didn't trust facebook with their data. That is an issue.
kin 11y ago
All of the use cases for this, Slack more or less solves, which Events being a Slack integration away. That being said, outside of the HN Community and outside of Tech savvy companies who know and prefer Slack, it's not completely useless. It's sure as hell better than Email groups and Calendar events in my opinion.
sangd 11y ago
Social vs Work, which one should we be more serious? Can they work together? I think probably not. Work productivity will decrease dramatically if we shift our focus to social.
Casseres 11y ago
In one of the screenshots, it shows how many people are "following" an employee. This is reminiscent of Enron's peer-evaluation process commonly referred to as "rank and yank". Since employee evaluations were based on ratings made by their coworkers, this led to unpopular employees being fired, and other employees engaging in questionable business practices to stay on top. I can easily imagining the type of boss who thinks this would be good for their office to also believe that someone who doesn't have as many followers isn't a "team player".
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Actually, a big part of the utility of Yammer is early detection of crazy people. It's also good to spot talent. We use this stuff for outreach and the "consulted", "informed" parts of RACI projects. Works well.
  - jka 11y ago
    What are the situations where Yammer can help in terms of detecting troublesome employees? That's an interesting use case / benefit.
    - cptskippy 11y ago
      I would imagine it's great for detecting who is goofing off when they should be working. We've had it at our office for 2 years now and, as near as I can tell, only the people who want to look like they're drinking the corporate kool aid have accounts.
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      People write amazingly crazy things in a public forum. One guy wrote and posted a 40 page manifesto about why we should replace PCs with 3270 terminals. (Not kidding) A support guy posted ASCII dick pic art in the all company forum. We had some Bernie Sanders v. Ron Paul showdowns. Overall, it has been really good. It's the go-to place for general HR questions. It's a great place to solicit testers and feedback. Definitely a net positive.
- 11y ago
kylehotchkiss 11y ago
Do they have todo lists for teams? Team Calendar with intelligence features?
narsil 11y ago
Considering I'm already Facebook friends with all my coworkers, being FB Work friends with them feels like presenting fake versions of ourselves to each other. Keeping Facebook for personal stuff, and Hipchat/Slack/Google for professional communication seems to work well for me.
pcurve 11y ago
I wonder if this product was conceived in a Utopian vacuum by FB employees where they think all other companies operate in a similar fashion as theirs, where everyone is brilliant, motivated, young, high-tech, and are always aiming at the apex of the Maslow's pyramid; and have similar pain points. I'm not being sarcastic (to the down voter). If you're an "A" talent, and are always used to working in certain type of environment, your view is quite skewed. How do you really know how a normal 30-people small business operate?
- hmahncke 11y ago
  I saw an interesting article [1] talking about Facebook at work adoption at Club Med, making the point that all their minimum wage workers were already familiar with Facebook on mobile devices, so adoption/training was easy for them, compared to learning a new interface for a workplace chat/collaboration product. [1] http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/09/facebook-for-works-pitch-to-enterprises-is-unmatched-theres-no-training-required/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/09/facebook-for-works-pitch-t...
patrickbolle 11y ago
I agree with a lot of the concerns in the posts so far. As of now it is simply Facebook with a different colour and focused on a group. Nothing special. But I do think that Facebook will end up releasing a better collaboration feature to help integrate teams into Facebook At Work. The reason I love Slack currently is the various apps and addons you can add, like the Github bot that posts when a pull request is created, or the Trello one that posts when someone completes a task. If FB adds something like this (or better), I think they will grab a large portion of the market that isn't already dedicated to Slack. Then it will slowly be improving features to steal Slack users after that.
nashashmi 11y ago
I didn't bother checking this out, but I feel like this is round 2. I remember when facebook was only limited to schools and then workplaces before being available to all. At the time, they optimized their "modules" to better facilitate "work/study" environments. If this is indeed round 2, this is great!
rgovind 11y ago
What I really want is a "linkedin at work" kind of product. In large cross functional organziations, it is often not easy to find who is the right person to talk to. For example, in a ecommerce firm, if you item description is wrong, you do not necessarily know whom to contact. I would like a product, internal to a company, where people write about all things they work on, in linkedin style summaries. Hopefully, this will have similar features in future.
- spdustin 11y ago
  SharePoint 2010/2013/Online do this, for those corporations who are immersed in the Microsoft ecosystem. If you have SharePoint now and you're not getting that benefit, the people who deployed it neglected to plan, and likely didn't involve mid-level management in a governance and architecture review process.
  - rgovind 11y ago
    Thanks. I didn't know that.
  - r00fus 11y ago
    Feature uptake is a very common challenge with enterprise software. Doubly so for on-premise software where IT has to manage OS/app server/etc dependencies.
- gwintrob 11y ago
  You might want to check out LinkedIn Lookup: http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/08/19/introducing-linkedin-lookup-easily-find-learn-about-and-contact-your-coworkers/ http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/08/19/introducing-linkedin-loo...
- suttree 11y ago
  I would humbly point in the direction of Somewhere.com
tdaltonc 11y ago
Where's the pricing section? Is this going to be ad supported? Cross subsidized?
srameshc 11y ago
I dread the day when I have to use this at work.
quernard 11y ago
I've applied for this multiple times in the past year and never heard anything back, so don't except much.
jonesb6 11y ago
Wouldn't knowing Facebook's profit model be enough to deter any company from using it internally?
asadlionpk 11y ago
We actually tried this for our company. Our initial response was that the product is a bad clone of the main FB (cloned maybe in React). Apart from that, it didn't make much sense to use FB@Work for anything. So we switched back to slack.
- matt_wulfeck 11y ago
  How did it work for things other than chat?
- sophiebits 11y ago
  What? Product design questions aside, it uses the exact same code as "main FB".
spotman 11y ago
This should have a [2015] or 2014 in the subject. This is not new, and is not really fully launched so its not really an interesting story for the most part. (0) http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/facebook-at-work/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/facebook-at-work/ (1) http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/14/facebook-at-work-ios-android/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/14/facebook-at-work-ios-androi...
- spicyj 11y ago
  This marketing page is new this week, at least.
ArtDev 11y ago
Facebook for work is LinkedIn.
matt_wulfeck 11y ago
it seems like one major thing this is missing is a ticketing and triaging system. What does Facebook use for this internally?
spdustin 11y ago
So... Yammer? FB Work: Groups help you make decisions and keep your team on the same page. Yammer: Organize all your team communication in one place with Yammer Groups. Create a single destination for your messages, files, and updates, where everyone has a view of what's going on without all the usual back-and-forth. FB Work: Get through to the people you need right away with Work Chat. Yammer: Spend less time crafting perfect emails, and more time doing. Conversations in Yammer make it easy to quickly share information on a topic, have active discussions around it, and agree on next steps. FB Work: Find the answers, past group posts or the files you need using search. Yammer: Find what you need, right when you need it. Yammer seamlessly enables connections to people and information from across your organization that you never knew existed, making it easier to move your work forward. FB Work: As a Facebook at Work customer, you also have controls to manage your organization’s data how you see fit. Yammer: Public Groups for working in the open; Private Groups for sensitive ideas. Safely collaborate with partners and customers with External Groups. Yep. Yammer.
- jsn117 11y ago
  but I don't use Yammer
  - cptskippy 11y ago
    Neither do Yammer subscribers.
    - FatalErrorr 11y ago
      Neither does anyone at Microsoft
      - d1ffuz0r 11y ago
        what is Yammer?
        cbo100 11y ago
Spooky23 11y ago
Sweet. Bring Facebook data mining and privacy practices to the workplace! What could go wrong!
heshuge 11y ago
slack by facebook
droopybuns 11y ago
This is a product I would actively shun. For better of worse, my prejudice of facebook is that it is an outstanding source of the following types of content: Humblebrag b.s. instagram photos passive aggressive shitposting about politics I can use social networks at work- but if they actually brought facebook in and demanded that we used it, I might consider quitting. I'd probably write a python script to repost random technical shit from a reasonable set of Twitter sources. But no way would I be happy about bringing facebook into my office.
- sk5t 11y ago
  Suppose you had to choose between Facebook and Sharepoint? Or maybe a really field-besotted Jira.
  - r00fus 11y ago
    Problem is in any large organization the real (and inevitable) choice is "all of the above" Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ The only way to win is not to play the game.
  - droopybuns 11y ago
    The user experience of SharePoint is so bad that MS should consider pursuing a patent for "a method for shitposting deterrence."
    - mattlutze 11y ago
      You'll need to qualify that critique, because the SharePoint installs I've consulted on have ended up with quite a high acceptance and use rate and have seen employees self-elect (without forcing them) to stop using email and shared drives for file collaboration). It's possible your experience with SharePoint was more an issue with who configured it. Or that you're thinking of SP2007?
      - paulyg 11y ago
        SharePoint is really good for shared files. But that is what it was created for. It is called Microsoft Office SharePoint. If you turn on Publishing Pages you can make is work as in intranet portal. But you have to work at it, there is a bit of friction involved in doing something as seemingly simple as making a webpage. The issue tracker/tasks feature is... "usable". I wouldn't use SharePoint for anything else than those features. P.S. I've been involved in rollouts (as a subsite admin, not IT) of SP2007 and SP2013.
jpace121 11y ago
In my undergrad studies in college, Facebook groups were commonly used as a way to create light weight shared group pages for study groups, projects, etc. I could see this being useful in the business world working in the same way. Specifically, most of the time someone would make a group for a study group and then everyone would use the group page to post meeting times, relevant files, etc. Group chats were used for quick communication, etc. The benefit this has over something like Slack is that it is something everyone is used to and comfortable with already. People, for the most part, understand what a group page is and how to post on one. People get how to send an IM or start a group chat. There is virtually no learning curve.
Pxtl 11y ago
If fb can oust that abomination LinkedIn out if professional space, I'll be ecstatic.
Aeolun 11y ago
Because having all your work related communication on Facebook's servers is certainly something you want as a company.
- dkarapetyan 11y ago
  First thing that came to mind. Some places require self-hosted products. That is why Atlassian products are so heavily used. Not because they're better but because they can live within company firewalls.
- United857 11y ago
  As opposed to them being on Google or Microsoft's?
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    Google and Microsoft don't have a history of stealing user's passwords and using it to spy on them. (Microsoft does have some history of losing data, but that's not as malicious)
  - lern_too_spel 11y ago
    Those companies undergo IT industry standard audits. https://www.microsoft.com/online/legal/v2/en-us/MOS_PTC_Security_Audit.htm https://www.microsoft.com/online/legal/v2/en-us/MOS_PTC_Secu... https://www.google.com/work/soc3.html https://www.google.com/work/soc3.html Facebook, on the other hand, is an all-around shitshow.
    - fs111 11y ago
      remember when facebook employees got the master key to all accounts as a perk? Yeah, totally trustworthy...
      - emilburzo 11y ago
        I haven't heard of this. Do you have a link with more details?
melted 11y ago
This ignores mountains of evidence that shows realtime, synchronous communication makes you less productive due to reducing (or eliminating) your ability to focus.
- wesleyy 11y ago
  Do you have any sources? Not trying to be a dick but this sounds interesting.
  - acjohnson55 11y ago
    As an anecdote, this has definitely been my experience. And it's compounded by having numerous different media: phone, text, GroupMe, Slack, email, Facebook, Hangouts, and so on. At this point, there's not a single service anybody can use to immediately reach me, because I've pretty much conditioned myself not to read anything until I feel ready to be distracted. It's a mess.
  - gregcoombe 11y ago
    There are some interesting links in this recent Economist article: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion-making-employees-collaborate-has-gone-too-far-collaboration-curse http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion-maki... Example quote: "... interruptions, even short ones, increase the total time required to complete a task by a significant amount." Including a book I'm going to check out, "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World"
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- morgante 11y ago
  It seems to be built primarily around asynchronous communication, not synchronous.
  - melted 11y ago
    It's only asynchronous is you have willpower, which is finite and easily exhausted, and if there's no expectation of realtime response on the other end, which there nearly always is these days. Whoever comes out with a viable system that is explicitly async (like mailman, or a good secretary) will really benefit humanity.
kartan 11y ago
I have been trying "Facebook at Work" at work. As we already had a Facebook group for the company it made sense. This is not a tool to compete with LinkedIn. It is a tool that competes with e-mail/mail lists. Somethings now make much more sense. From a security point of view, in a company over one thousand employees, it is easier to add or remove employees as they are hired or they left the company. Also it is easier to share work content for a limited audience while using your private Facebook account in a more casual way. The main problem is that people doesn't have so much interest in checking what's in there. We have already other communication methods like the old good mail. So "Facebook at Work" is just another one to add to the list. If you add it to your phone - I have done that - you will get notifications as the usual app. One of the problems is that you also will get them on weekends or when on vacations. That is not ideal. As any social tool it requires a lot of fine tuning and also to match the culture and preferences of the company. Probably it is a good move for Facebook taking into account cost/benefit, but it is never easy with social tools as Facebook competitors have seen in the past.
- rtpg 11y ago
  Does messenger also consider all this stuff? I could imagine it somewhat well in that case (well, so long as you're not pasting huge code blocks)
  - kartan 11y ago
    We don't use it. As we already use another tool for instant messaging. But looks like there is: http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/20/facebook-at-work-gets-its-own-version-of-messenger-with-debut-of-work-chat/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/20/facebook-at-work-gets-its-o...
- LinuxBender 11y ago
  I agree with your sentiments. In our company, communication is already highly splintered. We have so many ways of communicating, posting, sharing and chatting that nobody knows what is going on. It is also very distracting and time consuming. It is nearly impossible to do a conference over chat protocols now. Everyone wants to use "their own thing". It has become far worse than a TED talk I saw on meetings.
waitingkuo 11y ago
Does this work in China? We're considering giving it a try but the biggest concern is that one of our office is located in China.
- dcsan 11y ago
  probably not. wit.ai and other FB services resolve to the same blocked IP ranges. Then again, slack is slow as heck in china. what other services have you considered? WeChat for work is annoying with the disappearing messages and clunky desktop clients.
nradov 11y ago
Organizations that want an internal social network should also evaluate Jive. The UI isn't as slick as Facebook but overall I've been happy with it. https://www.jivesoftware.com https://www.jivesoftware.com
- Clobbersmith 11y ago
  I have to use Jive at work and I honestly hate it. There was a forced migration from email lists to jive and rather than continue the communication using Jive, the discussions just stopped. Enterprise social networks seem like a solution looking for a problem.
oneJob 11y ago
fuck this shit
eva1984 11y ago
We have Slack/HipChat and emails, why Facebook At Work? I just don't see the value to post everything at work in a news feed style, does it provide any value?
- tdkl 11y ago
  It doesn't provide value for the customer, but for Facebook. It's their existing monetization model.
rahulgulati 11y ago
Given what they did to Parse, this doesn't inspire much confidence. Also, tech companies would find it hard to ditch Slack for its numerous API integrations with services such as Atlassian, Github, Fog Creek.
eva1984 11y ago
One more big issue with this is, one value of Facebook is that you can carry history with it. But with this @work version, I cannot possibly see how you can have access to your previous company. It will never work the way that regular Facebook would.
skybrian 11y ago
I wonder how this compares to Google+ for work? https://support.google.com/a/answer/1631858?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/1631858?hl=en
kaushikt 11y ago
We've used "Facebook for Work" at work. It is highly distracting in IMO. One of the best productivity hacks is to never log into Facebook or any social accounts when at work. Now, we are working on it which keeps sending you notifications all day long and especially over the weekend. You like or comment saying - "Awesome, well deserved." The 100 people are going to do the same too. It's super annoying. This and the fact that you move on to your feed and then shitty videos, pics, buzzfeed and boom ! your whole afternoon is gone !
- nocman 11y ago
  Personally, I would say that "One of the best productivity hacks is to never log into Facebook" -- EVER! :-D
  - Nicholas_C 11y ago
    Not logging into HN is also a good one.
    - softawre 11y ago
      Yet here we are :) I do it to feel a little better about my productivity waste compared to reddit (and if I want to feel OK about reddit, it's /r/programming which is basically a crappier version of HN)
- tdkl 11y ago
  I'd thought FB for work is at least siloed from your personal FB. You get notifications from the personal account as well? Well now I know why they made it this way, since it'll drive the FB usage - even at work! Disgusting.
  - Shish2k 11y ago
    > You get notifications from the personal account as well? No
- GBond 11y ago
tallerholler 11y ago
facebook's downfall - trying to be everything for everyone
rebootthesystem 11y ago
This, good or bad, suffers from exactly the same problem other large internet companies "feature": What i like to call "Customer-No-Service". This is a feature whereby they get you to rely on their platform for various services and, when you need support, well, there ain't none. No email, phone, fax, telegram, hell not even smoke signals. And, of course, the added bonus is the traditionally unannounced account shutdown or suspension for no apparent fucking reason at all or some bullshit unpublished reason. What's best is that these are often followed by cryptic emails informing you of the account suspension. To make things even better, these emails are crafted to actually provide negative information and send you to the imsane asylum if you dare try to make any sense out of them. And, of course, no recourse whatsoever. Yeah, no, thanks. I like to sleep at night.
kriro 11y ago
I've seen a couple of the "let's bring social networks to the workplace" products and quite frankly none have impressed me so far. The real problem is not providing great technology but actually getting people in corporate environments to use it in a meaningful way. These projects usually end in the same manner...network is rolled out, used for a couple of weeks and fades into obscurity rarely used (and often leaving an extra attack vector). Or in other words...most lose the battle to good old email. That being said...this is potentially scary news for companies that are in the HR 2.0 business for lack of a better word. Typically their solutions have alumni management, stay in contact etc. that they tout. Well if your company has FB work and they later add the option to integrate private FB accounts of ex employees or something that's interesting. I know they say for now those are separate but I wouldn't be shocked if that changes eventually. Edit: If they want to segment this they should have given it an entirely different name imo. I'm sure there are marketing people at FB that are way more brilliant than me but this seems like a typical positioning mistake. You think you need to rely on your powerful main brand when you really want to create a new brand because you're attacking a different positioning slot in customer's heads. Don't have my Ries/Trout book at hand but it sounds familiar enough that I'll browse through it at home.
- bambax 11y ago
  Upvoted for the positioning part: brand extension is almost always a mistake. In this case maybe they want to leverage the fact that almost everyone has fb, but in the mind of users fb is not associated with "work". And it's likely to hurt their main brand because it will drain more "coolness" out of it.
  - Swizec 11y ago
    Or, as is already the case with a lot of us millenials: We have fb. Everyone we know has fb. Everyone we get to know is added to fb. There is no distinction between private life and work life. Fb is where we keep track of who we know. Fb is where we ask around if anyone knows of a company looking for a person. Fb is where we ask around if any person is looking for a company. Fb is where we group text. Fb is where we do all serious social networking. The first thing that happens when joining a new company is that everyone sends me Fb friend requests. That said, it looks like Slack is doing a great job of replacing email for in-office communication.
sidcool 11y ago
Not sure how this will affect Jive, Tibbr and the likes.
basicplus2 11y ago
Sounds like a great way to get hacked and loose propriatory rights to intellectual Property.. you'd have to be insane to sign up for this!
herbst 11y ago
When it sorts remotely similiar to original Facebook. I would miss 90% of the important posts and end up with the cat pics from the secretary. I dont think Facebook works for that at all.
efes 11y ago
If I were facebook, I would have hid this page for a month or two. I sure hope this causes the most traditional of French mobilizations against finalizing a new data safe harbor given that the ramifications for workers who are essentially unable to object have never been dealt with. I've found general software contracts to be a questionable thing to involve normal status employees in, cloud services (especially online tests and training) have muddied the water, and with social tool usage in the workplace, I have to wonder if there still is any water.
tensiuyan 11y ago
Facebook doesn't have my trust now. They shut down things easily without taken into consideration their users. See what it did to Parse.
joshmn 11y ago
Something similar, with an on-premise that's very mature is Bitrix[1]. It's a terrifying beast to setup, but once setup correctly it's actually pretty fun. [1] http://bitrix24.com http://bitrix24.com
tedmiston 11y ago
Has anyone experienced using an internal social network at a startup or small business? My company has grown from 10 to 30 employees across 3 states, and the only communication tools used by everyone are Slack and Gmail. I don't think this is something most people here would bother to actively use. Is there a minimum threshold where it becomes more commonplace? Maybe with 100 people?
crispycrucnchy 11y ago
https://work.facebook.com/confirmemail.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwork.facebook.com%2F%3Femail&rd https://work.facebook.com/confirmemail.php?next=https%3A%2F%... phew!
tvvocold 11y ago
The most interesting thing is this fb site was 'Powered by WordPress.com VIP', LMAO
- erikpukinskis 11y ago
  Using the right tool for the job is nothing to be ashamed of. It's a marketing site, it's basically just some seasonal content that will be replaced.
MehdiEG 11y ago
Relevant piece of trivia: I went to a meetup at Facebook's London offices a few months back and heard a presentation from the FB @ Work lead. This may surprise some but FB @ Work was entirely built by their London team in London. As you can imagine, they had to touch just about every part of the Facebook code base to make it happen. They still managed to pull it off despite being a "remote" team and unknown entity at first. Great to see some major engineering projects being owned here in the UK.
- fs111 11y ago
  You make it sound like this was some sort of heroic effort. It is (probably well paid) developers doing their job. That's it. No need for a parade.
  - djhn 11y ago
    Do UK engineers command salaries anywhere near SV level though?
    - eyko 11y ago
      I'd say it depends on who's paying. I've seen differences of close to £40K/year for my position.
    - wyclif 11y ago
      No, they don't on average. This has been discussed many times on HN. Apps like this are outsourced to UK offices to keep budgets low. I routinely get offers and recruiter calls from the UK, I usually don't respond to them because I know they can't match US salaries because none of them ever have for the comparable US job. Then there's moving to England, and the EU-related red tape. I love visiting the UK, but I'd never want to live there. And I'm a total anglophile.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - 11y ago
ionised 11y ago
This sounds nightmarish honestly.
- jdpigeon 11y ago
  Absolutely, like the future envisioned in Her where everyone's spinning their wheels in a fake economy, babied by technology, and all feeling incredibly lonely and hollow on the inside.
codeisawesome 11y ago
These "slick" videos with ultra fake chirpy videos make me sick nowadays. Oatmeal should draw a comic about this.
beatpanda 11y ago
But I thought Zuck said you lack integrity if you can't be the exact same person in every single social context? Why wouldn't you just make friends with your coworkers on your regular Facebook account? After all, only criminals have anything to hide, so why allow people to make separate profiles?
Fede_V 11y ago
I have always felt that the problem with linkedin wasn't so much the 'questionable' growth tactics (fake contacts which don't actually have accounts, etc) as much as the absolutely abysmal content that gets posted there. Whenever I go on linkedin, I'm spammed with an insane amount of articles about 'leadership' which are written in the worst kind of HR'ese by people that are blatantly trying to promote their brand. Facebook and Twitter are interesting because people share cool things which I like reading. The kind of content that people create/share on linkedin makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Don't even get me started on 'influencers'. Ugh. So - the problem with professional social media is that people sanitize everything so much that it's completely uninteresting to read. You could have a wonderful product, but it will be a beautiful shell filled with meaningless self promoting garbage.
glossyscr 11y ago
Social feeds, open chat rooms, getting followers—these are all ingredients of an highly addictive product, the typical instant gratification product of our generation. At work you do not need that shit. Normal Facebook can be excellent for professional networking and sometimes way better than Linkedin but why Facebook for productivity? You want to communicate? Every productivity solution has some chat, which can extend in seconds to a multi-user chat, to a call or video call (Hangouts, Office365). But yeah you can also use Slack, Hipchat or whatever, no rocket science for a decade. You want a feed of your coworkers? Why? You want to follow coworkers? Why? You have Facebook already. Email, messaging, video calls, an office with collaborating features and a task/ticket management solution. THAT'S IT, you do not need more. Depending on the industry and profession some more and specialized stuff might be required (such as CRM, SFA). I am wondering how the Facebook London remote team got the approval for this nonsense from Zuckerberg.
danielrm26 11y ago
Seems like an obvious competitor to Slack.
some1else 11y ago
I need two things to consider this: - Like semantics (Like to mark as completed?) - Markdown
NumberCruncher 11y ago
I think Facebook at Work and Slack try to fill the non existent gap between the old fashioned Outlook / VOIP + desktop sharing / chitchat at the watercooler.
kmfrk 11y ago
What strikes me is how enterprise-y the design of theh website is. It's pretty much the antithesis of Slack. A lot of people rely on Facebook for engaging audiences and social media campaigns, so it's very understandable that some companies might want to use this. I don't see this as a replace ment for Slack, though, but rather some of the dreadful social media platform integrations out there.
Sharlin 11y ago
The company I work for uses Google services and, as a part of that, Google+ events pretty extensively. Of course, that's exactly the feature Google decided to remove from their fancy new UI... It's still accessible via the old interface though.
pnut 11y ago
Right, and Facebook totally swears not to archive all conversations for "market research" and optimization. Seriously, their reputation for doing whatever they want with your information is well earned, what business would willingly expose their internal operations to this company?
devnull42 11y ago
So no onsite data storage and no at rest encryption? These are the reasons we have been having issues with Slack. I was hoping they would address these clear gaps in the enterprise market.
tomsun 11y ago
Soooo, facebook is trying to be slack?
xyzzy4 11y ago
So Facebook axed Parse, while devoting resources to this instead? Mark Zuckerberg is really losing it.
perlpimp 11y ago
Splitting domains of operation spurs need to sort people and interactions between domains. I worry about stuff leaking from my work account to "social" and vice versa. I do not organize my contacts in skype and I do not want to tag my friends into fb work. Facebook has been one of those enterprises that have sidestepped this problem by "tell me what school and when you have attended and I will tell you that you can message your alumni" type thing. About.me is in trend where resumes aren't enough anymore - people use it tell about themselves as human beings not corporate drones. Maybe this is the continuation of this trend. Friends(humans first not employees) working on cool things.
ckl1810 11y ago
This is merely Facebook sharing the way it does work at its workplace.
randiLee 11y ago
It look me longer than I would like to admit to realize this wasn't satire.
anonu 11y ago
I can't access this website at work. I think the first step would be to get corporate firewalls to open up!
TARRACARTER 11y ago
You've just given me the info I was searching for. You touched on a topical issue. I would appreciate if you'd written about how to fill a form online. I am sure at least once in your life you had to fill out a form. I use a simple service <a href="http://pdf.ac/7ZvoKq" http://pdf.ac/7ZvoKq" >http://pdf.ac/7ZvoKq</a> http://pdf.ac/7ZvoKq</a> for forms filling. It definitely makes my life easier!

449 points by nichodges 11y ago

More and more, I push for more in-house and self-hosted services for things like this. If I‘m using this as a regular workflow, I want to know that it won‘t go away one day.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
matt_wulfeck 11y ago
The problem with those self-hosted products is you're the person on hook to monitor, update, and maintain them. Much easier to let it be somebody else problem, especially since this stuff is like a AAA service.
- pgwhalen 11y ago
  In some industries though, self-hosted is a requirement.
copperx 11y ago
What you really want is a product you can pay for.

citricsquid 11y ago

Any theories on why they're using Wordpress.com VIP for this?

personjerry 11y ago
Fast and easy solution that doesn't seem to fail any of their needs?
- ktRolster 11y ago
  Unless their needs include security.....
caleblloyd 11y ago
Because someone from marketing made the site, not someone from engineering
- cm2012 11y ago
  Which is a good thing, in this case.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mdrovdahl 11y ago
FB currently hosts ~15 sites with WordPress.com VIP

voynich61 11y ago

Never has it been more apparent that morality doesn't come into the equation for Facebook.

jdoliner 11y ago
Is there something glaringly immoral about this?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

samstave 11y ago

Uh... Is this an attack on Slack? I have so many things to say about this but the last time I said anything anti-F B on H N I got lawyers against me. Please god people don't use this. Edit: I'm going to qualify my sentiment. FB thinks that "making the world more connected" is a good thing (TM) -- and in an utopian sense that may be true... But FB is not utopian. See the fucking onion article. You all know the one. The world doesn't need to be "more connected" --- it needs to be more conscious --- and very little work by many many startups are "making the world a better place" The fact is that the world is still just as dark as always. Slavery is up, consumption begets inequality and the worlds economies are all about consumption. How about creating an economy based on provisioning and providing. But because fuck you, that's why, is the philos of the day. Zuck needs to read his letter to his daughter and then read that same letter to one who has zero relation or zero connection to FB. If the only person he is committed to making the world a better place for is his child through his tax shelter, then we will truly know the morality of FB. Good fucking luck. /rant

quadrature 11y ago
why shouldn't this be used ?
- dreamdu5t 11y ago
  Because Facebook has no intention of keeping the service around if it isn't successful. Whereas with Slack, it's actually their business and already proven profitable/successful.
  - nness 11y ago
    That logic makes zero sense. "Success" and profitability are only states, you aren't guaranteed either forever. Just as Slack took time to establish both — time which Facebook will also need to establish them both for themselves.
wnmurphy 11y ago
What happened with the lawyers? That seems entirely unreasonable.

personjerry 11y ago

I don't really see the need for this, since the things you usually do on Facebook are not the same things you would do at a workplace community.

josho 11y ago
You forgot that you are the product being sold. This gives fb whole new layers of demographic data to sell to their customers.
jonathankoren 11y ago
It's segmented with two accounts. An FB@Work account and your regular FB account. Basically, everything at FB is run through FB. (e.g. Groups for everything!) Someone decided that because FB loves FB so much, and a billion people use it, others would want to run their business through FB as well. Now that there's post and comment search, it's not useless as a repository of knowledge, but at the same time I have a hard time believing that others will love FB@Work as much as FB loves FB@Work.

jdoliner 11y ago

I clicked this hopeful that Facebook had made a new product tailored to the needs of an office. Instead it seems like they recently decided that their existing product just happens to already be the perfect product for the office and rebranded it. I don't buy this at all, teams don't actually collaborate by sending each other green giraffe stickers.

onewaystreet 11y ago
People who use Slack do.
- jdoliner 11y ago
  To clarify it's not that emoticons can't be part of how people communicate at work. I just couldn't really believe those exchanges they were showing there. Slack puts the whole conversation right in front of you and makes link and searching really comfortable. The fb share box really isn't meant for that.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Slack charges. When is "Work" going to end up like Parse?
  - carb 11y ago
    Facebook At Work is not a free service.
  - benatkin 11y ago
    Maybe they killed Parse because it wasn't all about keeping people in their walled garden, and enabled people to duplicate features of facebook. It could be in line with what they did with FBML & facebook apps.
  - dsl 11y ago
    My guess is "Work" is a ploy to get Facebook un-blocked by corporate firewalls. The business functionality has already existed (since FB uses its own platform internally), so its comparatively minor in engineering effort.

eCa 11y ago

> For companies who get things done http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/is-it-a-company-who-or-a-company-that http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/is-it-a-c...

tristanj 11y ago
Yes it's bad grammar but I'm pretty sure the phrasing is intentional. They're using an anthropomorphism, a common UX trend these days. Apple uses it in all their iPad and iPhone ads (e.g. Do more with iPhone). A while back a reporter called out Apple on their un-grammatical naming and an exec justified it saying that leaving out the "a/an/the" on their products made them seem more alive and less replaceable. It shows there's a deeper connection to the product and Apple wants to convey that message to their customers. So yes, it's bad grammar but it's here to stay.

deleted 11y ago

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jonathankoren 11y ago
What company uses LI for internal communication?
- fuzzywalrus 11y ago
  While there's nothing explicit in the demo video, screenshots like the following infer LinkedIn like behavior between people: https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/facebook-at-work/assets/img/slidefour-devices.png https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/facebook-at-work/ass... https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/facebook-at-work/assets/img/quote-1.png https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/facebook-at-work/ass...

runn1ng 11y ago

I just don't believe having Facebook opened at work will in any way increase my productivity.

andy_ppp 11y ago

Something about this creeps me out. Next up "Facebook staring at you watching you sleep".

felixrieseberg 11y ago

I don't see a clear answer on whether or not Facebook will analyze or use the data in any way. It is said that a company can "control" the data, but I'd like to know how Facebook will handle the data.

tyre 11y ago

I will not use a product supported by advertising for internal communication. The demographic data they would mine would be invaluable to them, but for a company would be unconscionable to give to a third party. Especially one so historically lax about privacy. You can mine my social life all you want, but when it comes to business, get the hell away.

untog 11y ago
I will not use a product supported by advertising for internal communication. It does not.
guycook 11y ago
"You can mine my social life all you want, but when it comes to business, get the hell away." I like it when people accidentally summarise life in 21st century capitalism on HN
- ecthiender 11y ago
  Couldn't help but laugh out loud. Well said!
carlosdp 11y ago
Facebook at Work isn't going to be free. I also highly doubt they'll be touching any of the FB@Work data for mining, just like Google Apps for Business doesn't mine business accounts or serve ads.

a_l_e_x 11y ago

I don't want a social network like Facebook at work. This takes all of the worst parts of Slack and makes them worse.

freshyill 11y ago

So is this supposed to be an alternative to Yammer? Because that thing is terrible. Not just the implementation, but the very idea. Normal Facebook at least has some element of fun to it. What's the purpose of the same thing, but for work? To share a bunch of the same "professional" garbage that people share on LinkedIn and maybe try to look smart in front of the boss? Seriously, who actually wants to use something like this?

codesushi42 11y ago

Really? After Slack, Yammer, and LinkedIn this is all they have to offer? Totally uninspiring. DOA.

nness 11y ago

Why on earth does this site attempt to remotely log you in to WordPress? It was completely jarring to have the WordPress bar appear above the site. EDIT: Seems they are using the WordPress.com VIP service. That explains that.

pandatigox 11y ago

As @voynich61 has mentioned, there's something incredibly morally murky about this product. The first thing that came to my head is stalking. Before Facebook "Work", the workplace was relatively safe. As long as you don't provide any info, such as phone numbers, personal email address, and had some pretty good privacy settings, you could deflect some potential stalkers at work. For the sake of the argument, I'm going to assume that with Facebook Work, you login with your normal Facebook account, because, you know, ease of signing up, etc. And I'm going to further assume that this "work" thing will also make a copy of your profile picture, bio details, etc. With all this information, it's not going to be hard for co-workers to start harassing you online. And since it's the same workplace, you'll soon have to rebuffing them both offline and online. Additionally, employers will easily find your personal information, such as things you did on the weekend, embarrassing photos that shouldn't be shared around the workplace, etc. While I sort-of (not really) congratulate Facebook on trying out some new moves, there are some lines that shouldn't be crossed, and lately, Facebook has been crossing all of them. Free Basics, is the latest example that comes to mind. I know in the past Facebook has had a "hacker" mentality when making new products, but for a company as big as Facebook, I wish they gave their products a bit more thought before attempting them.

NDizzle 11y ago
Wow. Where do you work that you worry about things like that? Why do you continue to work there?!
- prostoalex 11y ago
  That was my thought too - with all of the implied harassment, offline bullying, sleuthing and shaming going on perhaps there are grander issues than Facebook launching a corporate product.
victorvation 11y ago
You create a new account. It's mentioned in the first line of marketing copy. > It's easy to get started. You just create a new Facebook at Work account to connect with coworkers.

ivanecky844 11y ago

In direct competition with Slack, let's see how this panes out.

benatkin 11y ago

I'm pretty sure this is going to be big. I think Slack is so successful not just because of the chat interface and the integrations, but because people reliably receive notifications, messages can contain attachments that are presented in a helpful way, and because it has good ways of organizing groups. Facebook has everything but the chat interface and the integrations. I don't see any reason for them not to add these.

ossreality 11y ago
This is just fucking hilarious. You know what gives me reliable notifications? You know what lets me view my attachments in whatever way I want? You know what lets me organize/tag/correlate my messages the way I want? OMG ITS EMAIL. In 3 years everything is going to bitch about IM the same way they bitch about email. And they're the ones that asked for it.
untog 11y ago
But Slack is a chat service. I'm struggling to imagine what I would ever want to see in my Work News Feed.
- rokhayakebe 11y ago
  Think knowledge base, all that information trapped inside Email which requires people to answer the same question 1000 times. Each one incomplete.
  - untog 11y ago
    You want to solve that? Think "Wiki", not "News Feed".
- dchuk 11y ago
  It appears that this Facebook Work thing also includes a private work chat system somewhat comparable to Slack.
- skewart 11y ago
  I take it you've never used Yammer, which was created as "Facebook for work" seven years ago. The Yammer news feed is actually a great way to stay generally aware of what's going on in your company across lots of different groups or functions. I'm an engineer and its nice to see what sales and customer support are worried about from time to time and occasionally chimein when I can be helpful. At my company we use chat for quick, immediate conversations, and Yammer for bigger, more in depth conversations about product or architecture or various business tactics. I imagine Facebook for Work would happily fill a very similar role to Yammer, sitting comfortably alongside chat. Of course, they'll probably have a much easier time with distribution given the brand recognition.

rahulshiv 11y ago

Anybody else having issues with the video on their main page? It doesn't load for me on Chrome.

whitegrape 11y ago

I thought this was new, but apparently they announced working on it around June 2014 and even had the apps around since early 2015 which would explain how the Google Play app already has 60k reviews... Discovered this while looking for comparisons to Salesforce's Chatter: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebookwork-vs-salesforce-chatter-vincent-rochebrun-rodriguez https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebookwork-vs-salesforce-ch...

kin 11y ago

All of the use cases for this, Slack more or less solves, which Events being a Slack integration away. That being said, outside of the HN Community and outside of Tech savvy companies who know and prefer Slack, it's not completely useless. It's sure as hell better than Email groups and Calendar events in my opinion.

eva1984 11y ago
People didn't trust facebook with their data. That is an issue.

kin 11y ago

sangd 11y ago

Social vs Work, which one should we be more serious? Can they work together? I think probably not. Work productivity will decrease dramatically if we shift our focus to social.

Casseres 11y ago

In one of the screenshots, it shows how many people are "following" an employee. This is reminiscent of Enron's peer-evaluation process commonly referred to as "rank and yank". Since employee evaluations were based on ratings made by their coworkers, this led to unpopular employees being fired, and other employees engaging in questionable business practices to stay on top. I can easily imagining the type of boss who thinks this would be good for their office to also believe that someone who doesn't have as many followers isn't a "team player".

Spooky23 11y ago
Actually, a big part of the utility of Yammer is early detection of crazy people. It's also good to spot talent. We use this stuff for outreach and the "consulted", "informed" parts of RACI projects. Works well.
- jka 11y ago
  What are the situations where Yammer can help in terms of detecting troublesome employees? That's an interesting use case / benefit.
  - cptskippy 11y ago
    I would imagine it's great for detecting who is goofing off when they should be working. We've had it at our office for 2 years now and, as near as I can tell, only the people who want to look like they're drinking the corporate kool aid have accounts.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    People write amazingly crazy things in a public forum. One guy wrote and posted a 40 page manifesto about why we should replace PCs with 3270 terminals. (Not kidding) A support guy posted ASCII dick pic art in the all company forum. We had some Bernie Sanders v. Ron Paul showdowns. Overall, it has been really good. It's the go-to place for general HR questions. It's a great place to solicit testers and feedback. Definitely a net positive.
11y ago

kylehotchkiss 11y ago

Do they have todo lists for teams? Team Calendar with intelligence features?

narsil 11y ago

Considering I'm already Facebook friends with all my coworkers, being FB Work friends with them feels like presenting fake versions of ourselves to each other. Keeping Facebook for personal stuff, and Hipchat/Slack/Google for professional communication seems to work well for me.

pcurve 11y ago

I wonder if this product was conceived in a Utopian vacuum by FB employees where they think all other companies operate in a similar fashion as theirs, where everyone is brilliant, motivated, young, high-tech, and are always aiming at the apex of the Maslow's pyramid; and have similar pain points. I'm not being sarcastic (to the down voter). If you're an "A" talent, and are always used to working in certain type of environment, your view is quite skewed. How do you really know how a normal 30-people small business operate?

hmahncke 11y ago
I saw an interesting article [1] talking about Facebook at work adoption at Club Med, making the point that all their minimum wage workers were already familiar with Facebook on mobile devices, so adoption/training was easy for them, compared to learning a new interface for a workplace chat/collaboration product. [1] http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/09/facebook-for-works-pitch-to-enterprises-is-unmatched-theres-no-training-required/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/09/facebook-for-works-pitch-t...

patrickbolle 11y ago

I agree with a lot of the concerns in the posts so far. As of now it is simply Facebook with a different colour and focused on a group. Nothing special. But I do think that Facebook will end up releasing a better collaboration feature to help integrate teams into Facebook At Work. The reason I love Slack currently is the various apps and addons you can add, like the Github bot that posts when a pull request is created, or the Trello one that posts when someone completes a task. If FB adds something like this (or better), I think they will grab a large portion of the market that isn't already dedicated to Slack. Then it will slowly be improving features to steal Slack users after that.

nashashmi 11y ago

I didn't bother checking this out, but I feel like this is round 2. I remember when facebook was only limited to schools and then workplaces before being available to all. At the time, they optimized their "modules" to better facilitate "work/study" environments. If this is indeed round 2, this is great!

rgovind 11y ago

What I really want is a "linkedin at work" kind of product. In large cross functional organziations, it is often not easy to find who is the right person to talk to. For example, in a ecommerce firm, if you item description is wrong, you do not necessarily know whom to contact. I would like a product, internal to a company, where people write about all things they work on, in linkedin style summaries. Hopefully, this will have similar features in future.

spdustin 11y ago
SharePoint 2010/2013/Online do this, for those corporations who are immersed in the Microsoft ecosystem. If you have SharePoint now and you're not getting that benefit, the people who deployed it neglected to plan, and likely didn't involve mid-level management in a governance and architecture review process.
- rgovind 11y ago
  Thanks. I didn't know that.
- r00fus 11y ago
  Feature uptake is a very common challenge with enterprise software. Doubly so for on-premise software where IT has to manage OS/app server/etc dependencies.
gwintrob 11y ago
You might want to check out LinkedIn Lookup: http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/08/19/introducing-linkedin-lookup-easily-find-learn-about-and-contact-your-coworkers/ http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/08/19/introducing-linkedin-loo...
suttree 11y ago
I would humbly point in the direction of Somewhere.com

tdaltonc 11y ago

Where's the pricing section? Is this going to be ad supported? Cross subsidized?

srameshc 11y ago

I dread the day when I have to use this at work.

quernard 11y ago

I've applied for this multiple times in the past year and never heard anything back, so don't except much.

jonesb6 11y ago

Wouldn't knowing Facebook's profit model be enough to deter any company from using it internally?

asadlionpk 11y ago

We actually tried this for our company. Our initial response was that the product is a bad clone of the main FB (cloned maybe in React). Apart from that, it didn't make much sense to use FB@Work for anything. So we switched back to slack.

matt_wulfeck 11y ago
How did it work for things other than chat?
sophiebits 11y ago
What? Product design questions aside, it uses the exact same code as "main FB".

spotman 11y ago

This should have a [2015] or 2014 in the subject. This is not new, and is not really fully launched so its not really an interesting story for the most part. (0) http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/facebook-at-work/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/facebook-at-work/ (1) http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/14/facebook-at-work-ios-android/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/14/facebook-at-work-ios-androi...

spicyj 11y ago
This marketing page is new this week, at least.

ArtDev 11y ago

Facebook for work is LinkedIn.

matt_wulfeck 11y ago

it seems like one major thing this is missing is a ticketing and triaging system. What does Facebook use for this internally?

spdustin 11y ago

So... Yammer? FB Work: Groups help you make decisions and keep your team on the same page. Yammer: Organize all your team communication in one place with Yammer Groups. Create a single destination for your messages, files, and updates, where everyone has a view of what's going on without all the usual back-and-forth. FB Work: Get through to the people you need right away with Work Chat. Yammer: Spend less time crafting perfect emails, and more time doing. Conversations in Yammer make it easy to quickly share information on a topic, have active discussions around it, and agree on next steps. FB Work: Find the answers, past group posts or the files you need using search. Yammer: Find what you need, right when you need it. Yammer seamlessly enables connections to people and information from across your organization that you never knew existed, making it easier to move your work forward. FB Work: As a Facebook at Work customer, you also have controls to manage your organization’s data how you see fit. Yammer: Public Groups for working in the open; Private Groups for sensitive ideas. Safely collaborate with partners and customers with External Groups. Yep. Yammer.

jsn117 11y ago
but I don't use Yammer
- cptskippy 11y ago
  Neither do Yammer subscribers.
  - FatalErrorr 11y ago
    Neither does anyone at Microsoft
    - d1ffuz0r 11y ago
      what is Yammer?
      - cbo100 11y ago

Spooky23 11y ago

Sweet. Bring Facebook data mining and privacy practices to the workplace! What could go wrong!

heshuge 11y ago

slack by facebook

droopybuns 11y ago

This is a product I would actively shun. For better of worse, my prejudice of facebook is that it is an outstanding source of the following types of content: Humblebrag b.s. instagram photos passive aggressive shitposting about politics I can use social networks at work- but if they actually brought facebook in and demanded that we used it, I might consider quitting. I'd probably write a python script to repost random technical shit from a reasonable set of Twitter sources. But no way would I be happy about bringing facebook into my office.

sk5t 11y ago
Suppose you had to choose between Facebook and Sharepoint? Or maybe a really field-besotted Jira.
- r00fus 11y ago
  Problem is in any large organization the real (and inevitable) choice is "all of the above" Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ The only way to win is not to play the game.
- droopybuns 11y ago
  The user experience of SharePoint is so bad that MS should consider pursuing a patent for "a method for shitposting deterrence."
  - mattlutze 11y ago
    You'll need to qualify that critique, because the SharePoint installs I've consulted on have ended up with quite a high acceptance and use rate and have seen employees self-elect (without forcing them) to stop using email and shared drives for file collaboration). It's possible your experience with SharePoint was more an issue with who configured it. Or that you're thinking of SP2007?
    - paulyg 11y ago
      SharePoint is really good for shared files. But that is what it was created for. It is called Microsoft Office SharePoint. If you turn on Publishing Pages you can make is work as in intranet portal. But you have to work at it, there is a bit of friction involved in doing something as seemingly simple as making a webpage. The issue tracker/tasks feature is... "usable". I wouldn't use SharePoint for anything else than those features. P.S. I've been involved in rollouts (as a subsite admin, not IT) of SP2007 and SP2013.

jpace121 11y ago

In my undergrad studies in college, Facebook groups were commonly used as a way to create light weight shared group pages for study groups, projects, etc. I could see this being useful in the business world working in the same way. Specifically, most of the time someone would make a group for a study group and then everyone would use the group page to post meeting times, relevant files, etc. Group chats were used for quick communication, etc. The benefit this has over something like Slack is that it is something everyone is used to and comfortable with already. People, for the most part, understand what a group page is and how to post on one. People get how to send an IM or start a group chat. There is virtually no learning curve.

Pxtl 11y ago

If fb can oust that abomination LinkedIn out if professional space, I'll be ecstatic.

Aeolun 11y ago

Because having all your work related communication on Facebook's servers is certainly something you want as a company.

dkarapetyan 11y ago
First thing that came to mind. Some places require self-hosted products. That is why Atlassian products are so heavily used. Not because they're better but because they can live within company firewalls.
United857 11y ago
As opposed to them being on Google or Microsoft's?
- ktRolster 11y ago
  Google and Microsoft don't have a history of stealing user's passwords and using it to spy on them. (Microsoft does have some history of losing data, but that's not as malicious)
- lern_too_spel 11y ago
  Those companies undergo IT industry standard audits. https://www.microsoft.com/online/legal/v2/en-us/MOS_PTC_Security_Audit.htm https://www.microsoft.com/online/legal/v2/en-us/MOS_PTC_Secu... https://www.google.com/work/soc3.html https://www.google.com/work/soc3.html Facebook, on the other hand, is an all-around shitshow.
  - fs111 11y ago
    remember when facebook employees got the master key to all accounts as a perk? Yeah, totally trustworthy...
    - emilburzo 11y ago
      I haven't heard of this. Do you have a link with more details?

melted 11y ago

This ignores mountains of evidence that shows realtime, synchronous communication makes you less productive due to reducing (or eliminating) your ability to focus.

wesleyy 11y ago
Do you have any sources? Not trying to be a dick but this sounds interesting.
- acjohnson55 11y ago
  As an anecdote, this has definitely been my experience. And it's compounded by having numerous different media: phone, text, GroupMe, Slack, email, Facebook, Hangouts, and so on. At this point, there's not a single service anybody can use to immediately reach me, because I've pretty much conditioned myself not to read anything until I feel ready to be distracted. It's a mess.
- gregcoombe 11y ago
  There are some interesting links in this recent Economist article: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion-making-employees-collaborate-has-gone-too-far-collaboration-curse http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion-maki... Example quote: "... interruptions, even short ones, increase the total time required to complete a task by a significant amount." Including a book I'm going to check out, "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World"
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
morgante 11y ago
It seems to be built primarily around asynchronous communication, not synchronous.
- melted 11y ago
  It's only asynchronous is you have willpower, which is finite and easily exhausted, and if there's no expectation of realtime response on the other end, which there nearly always is these days. Whoever comes out with a viable system that is explicitly async (like mailman, or a good secretary) will really benefit humanity.

kartan 11y ago

I have been trying "Facebook at Work" at work. As we already had a Facebook group for the company it made sense. This is not a tool to compete with LinkedIn. It is a tool that competes with e-mail/mail lists. Somethings now make much more sense. From a security point of view, in a company over one thousand employees, it is easier to add or remove employees as they are hired or they left the company. Also it is easier to share work content for a limited audience while using your private Facebook account in a more casual way. The main problem is that people doesn't have so much interest in checking what's in there. We have already other communication methods like the old good mail. So "Facebook at Work" is just another one to add to the list. If you add it to your phone - I have done that - you will get notifications as the usual app. One of the problems is that you also will get them on weekends or when on vacations. That is not ideal. As any social tool it requires a lot of fine tuning and also to match the culture and preferences of the company. Probably it is a good move for Facebook taking into account cost/benefit, but it is never easy with social tools as Facebook competitors have seen in the past.

rtpg 11y ago
Does messenger also consider all this stuff? I could imagine it somewhat well in that case (well, so long as you're not pasting huge code blocks)
- kartan 11y ago
  We don't use it. As we already use another tool for instant messaging. But looks like there is: http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/20/facebook-at-work-gets-its-own-version-of-messenger-with-debut-of-work-chat/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/20/facebook-at-work-gets-its-o...
LinuxBender 11y ago
I agree with your sentiments. In our company, communication is already highly splintered. We have so many ways of communicating, posting, sharing and chatting that nobody knows what is going on. It is also very distracting and time consuming. It is nearly impossible to do a conference over chat protocols now. Everyone wants to use "their own thing". It has become far worse than a TED talk I saw on meetings.

waitingkuo 11y ago

Does this work in China? We're considering giving it a try but the biggest concern is that one of our office is located in China.

dcsan 11y ago
probably not. wit.ai and other FB services resolve to the same blocked IP ranges. Then again, slack is slow as heck in china. what other services have you considered? WeChat for work is annoying with the disappearing messages and clunky desktop clients.

nradov 11y ago

Organizations that want an internal social network should also evaluate Jive. The UI isn't as slick as Facebook but overall I've been happy with it. https://www.jivesoftware.com https://www.jivesoftware.com

Clobbersmith 11y ago
I have to use Jive at work and I honestly hate it. There was a forced migration from email lists to jive and rather than continue the communication using Jive, the discussions just stopped. Enterprise social networks seem like a solution looking for a problem.

oneJob 11y ago

fuck this shit

eva1984 11y ago

We have Slack/HipChat and emails, why Facebook At Work? I just don't see the value to post everything at work in a news feed style, does it provide any value?

tdkl 11y ago
It doesn't provide value for the customer, but for Facebook. It's their existing monetization model.

rahulgulati 11y ago

Given what they did to Parse, this doesn't inspire much confidence. Also, tech companies would find it hard to ditch Slack for its numerous API integrations with services such as Atlassian, Github, Fog Creek.

eva1984 11y ago

One more big issue with this is, one value of Facebook is that you can carry history with it. But with this @work version, I cannot possibly see how you can have access to your previous company. It will never work the way that regular Facebook would.

skybrian 11y ago

I wonder how this compares to Google+ for work? https://support.google.com/a/answer/1631858?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/1631858?hl=en

kaushikt 11y ago

We've used "Facebook for Work" at work. It is highly distracting in IMO. One of the best productivity hacks is to never log into Facebook or any social accounts when at work. Now, we are working on it which keeps sending you notifications all day long and especially over the weekend. You like or comment saying - "Awesome, well deserved." The 100 people are going to do the same too. It's super annoying. This and the fact that you move on to your feed and then shitty videos, pics, buzzfeed and boom ! your whole afternoon is gone !

nocman 11y ago
Personally, I would say that "One of the best productivity hacks is to never log into Facebook" -- EVER! :-D
- Nicholas_C 11y ago
  Not logging into HN is also a good one.
  - softawre 11y ago
    Yet here we are :) I do it to feel a little better about my productivity waste compared to reddit (and if I want to feel OK about reddit, it's /r/programming which is basically a crappier version of HN)
tdkl 11y ago
I'd thought FB for work is at least siloed from your personal FB. You get notifications from the personal account as well? Well now I know why they made it this way, since it'll drive the FB usage - even at work! Disgusting.
- Shish2k 11y ago
  > You get notifications from the personal account as well? No
GBond 11y ago

tallerholler 11y ago

facebook's downfall - trying to be everything for everyone

rebootthesystem 11y ago

This, good or bad, suffers from exactly the same problem other large internet companies "feature": What i like to call "Customer-No-Service". This is a feature whereby they get you to rely on their platform for various services and, when you need support, well, there ain't none. No email, phone, fax, telegram, hell not even smoke signals. And, of course, the added bonus is the traditionally unannounced account shutdown or suspension for no apparent fucking reason at all or some bullshit unpublished reason. What's best is that these are often followed by cryptic emails informing you of the account suspension. To make things even better, these emails are crafted to actually provide negative information and send you to the imsane asylum if you dare try to make any sense out of them. And, of course, no recourse whatsoever. Yeah, no, thanks. I like to sleep at night.

kriro 11y ago

I've seen a couple of the "let's bring social networks to the workplace" products and quite frankly none have impressed me so far. The real problem is not providing great technology but actually getting people in corporate environments to use it in a meaningful way. These projects usually end in the same manner...network is rolled out, used for a couple of weeks and fades into obscurity rarely used (and often leaving an extra attack vector). Or in other words...most lose the battle to good old email. That being said...this is potentially scary news for companies that are in the HR 2.0 business for lack of a better word. Typically their solutions have alumni management, stay in contact etc. that they tout. Well if your company has FB work and they later add the option to integrate private FB accounts of ex employees or something that's interesting. I know they say for now those are separate but I wouldn't be shocked if that changes eventually. Edit: If they want to segment this they should have given it an entirely different name imo. I'm sure there are marketing people at FB that are way more brilliant than me but this seems like a typical positioning mistake. You think you need to rely on your powerful main brand when you really want to create a new brand because you're attacking a different positioning slot in customer's heads. Don't have my Ries/Trout book at hand but it sounds familiar enough that I'll browse through it at home.

bambax 11y ago
Upvoted for the positioning part: brand extension is almost always a mistake. In this case maybe they want to leverage the fact that almost everyone has fb, but in the mind of users fb is not associated with "work". And it's likely to hurt their main brand because it will drain more "coolness" out of it.
- Swizec 11y ago
  Or, as is already the case with a lot of us millenials: We have fb. Everyone we know has fb. Everyone we get to know is added to fb. There is no distinction between private life and work life. Fb is where we keep track of who we know. Fb is where we ask around if anyone knows of a company looking for a person. Fb is where we ask around if any person is looking for a company. Fb is where we group text. Fb is where we do all serious social networking. The first thing that happens when joining a new company is that everyone sends me Fb friend requests. That said, it looks like Slack is doing a great job of replacing email for in-office communication.

sidcool 11y ago

Not sure how this will affect Jive, Tibbr and the likes.

basicplus2 11y ago

Sounds like a great way to get hacked and loose propriatory rights to intellectual Property.. you'd have to be insane to sign up for this!

herbst 11y ago

When it sorts remotely similiar to original Facebook. I would miss 90% of the important posts and end up with the cat pics from the secretary. I dont think Facebook works for that at all.

efes 11y ago

If I were facebook, I would have hid this page for a month or two. I sure hope this causes the most traditional of French mobilizations against finalizing a new data safe harbor given that the ramifications for workers who are essentially unable to object have never been dealt with. I've found general software contracts to be a questionable thing to involve normal status employees in, cloud services (especially online tests and training) have muddied the water, and with social tool usage in the workplace, I have to wonder if there still is any water.

tensiuyan 11y ago

Facebook doesn't have my trust now. They shut down things easily without taken into consideration their users. See what it did to Parse.

joshmn 11y ago

Something similar, with an on-premise that's very mature is Bitrix[1]. It's a terrifying beast to setup, but once setup correctly it's actually pretty fun. [1] http://bitrix24.com http://bitrix24.com

tedmiston 11y ago

Has anyone experienced using an internal social network at a startup or small business? My company has grown from 10 to 30 employees across 3 states, and the only communication tools used by everyone are Slack and Gmail. I don't think this is something most people here would bother to actively use. Is there a minimum threshold where it becomes more commonplace? Maybe with 100 people?

crispycrucnchy 11y ago

https://work.facebook.com/confirmemail.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwork.facebook.com%2F%3Femail&rd https://work.facebook.com/confirmemail.php?next=https%3A%2F%... phew!

tvvocold 11y ago

The most interesting thing is this fb site was 'Powered by WordPress.com VIP', LMAO

erikpukinskis 11y ago
Using the right tool for the job is nothing to be ashamed of. It's a marketing site, it's basically just some seasonal content that will be replaced.

MehdiEG 11y ago

Relevant piece of trivia: I went to a meetup at Facebook's London offices a few months back and heard a presentation from the FB @ Work lead. This may surprise some but FB @ Work was entirely built by their London team in London. As you can imagine, they had to touch just about every part of the Facebook code base to make it happen. They still managed to pull it off despite being a "remote" team and unknown entity at first. Great to see some major engineering projects being owned here in the UK.

fs111 11y ago
You make it sound like this was some sort of heroic effort. It is (probably well paid) developers doing their job. That's it. No need for a parade.
- djhn 11y ago
  Do UK engineers command salaries anywhere near SV level though?
  - eyko 11y ago
    I'd say it depends on who's paying. I've seen differences of close to £40K/year for my position.
  - wyclif 11y ago
    No, they don't on average. This has been discussed many times on HN. Apps like this are outsourced to UK offices to keep budgets low. I routinely get offers and recruiter calls from the UK, I usually don't respond to them because I know they can't match US salaries because none of them ever have for the comparable US job. Then there's moving to England, and the EU-related red tape. I love visiting the UK, but I'd never want to live there. And I'm a total anglophile.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - 11y ago

ionised 11y ago

This sounds nightmarish honestly.

jdpigeon 11y ago
Absolutely, like the future envisioned in Her where everyone's spinning their wheels in a fake economy, babied by technology, and all feeling incredibly lonely and hollow on the inside.

codeisawesome 11y ago

These "slick" videos with ultra fake chirpy videos make me sick nowadays. Oatmeal should draw a comic about this.

beatpanda 11y ago

But I thought Zuck said you lack integrity if you can't be the exact same person in every single social context? Why wouldn't you just make friends with your coworkers on your regular Facebook account? After all, only criminals have anything to hide, so why allow people to make separate profiles?

Fede_V 11y ago

I have always felt that the problem with linkedin wasn't so much the 'questionable' growth tactics (fake contacts which don't actually have accounts, etc) as much as the absolutely abysmal content that gets posted there. Whenever I go on linkedin, I'm spammed with an insane amount of articles about 'leadership' which are written in the worst kind of HR'ese by people that are blatantly trying to promote their brand. Facebook and Twitter are interesting because people share cool things which I like reading. The kind of content that people create/share on linkedin makes me want to gouge my eyes out. Don't even get me started on 'influencers'. Ugh. So - the problem with professional social media is that people sanitize everything so much that it's completely uninteresting to read. You could have a wonderful product, but it will be a beautiful shell filled with meaningless self promoting garbage.

glossyscr 11y ago

Social feeds, open chat rooms, getting followers—these are all ingredients of an highly addictive product, the typical instant gratification product of our generation. At work you do not need that shit. Normal Facebook can be excellent for professional networking and sometimes way better than Linkedin but why Facebook for productivity? You want to communicate? Every productivity solution has some chat, which can extend in seconds to a multi-user chat, to a call or video call (Hangouts, Office365). But yeah you can also use Slack, Hipchat or whatever, no rocket science for a decade. You want a feed of your coworkers? Why? You want to follow coworkers? Why? You have Facebook already. Email, messaging, video calls, an office with collaborating features and a task/ticket management solution. THAT'S IT, you do not need more. Depending on the industry and profession some more and specialized stuff might be required (such as CRM, SFA). I am wondering how the Facebook London remote team got the approval for this nonsense from Zuckerberg.

danielrm26 11y ago

Seems like an obvious competitor to Slack.

some1else 11y ago

I need two things to consider this: - Like semantics (Like to mark as completed?) - Markdown

NumberCruncher 11y ago

I think Facebook at Work and Slack try to fill the non existent gap between the old fashioned Outlook / VOIP + desktop sharing / chitchat at the watercooler.

kmfrk 11y ago

What strikes me is how enterprise-y the design of theh website is. It's pretty much the antithesis of Slack. A lot of people rely on Facebook for engaging audiences and social media campaigns, so it's very understandable that some companies might want to use this. I don't see this as a replace ment for Slack, though, but rather some of the dreadful social media platform integrations out there.

Sharlin 11y ago

The company I work for uses Google services and, as a part of that, Google+ events pretty extensively. Of course, that's exactly the feature Google decided to remove from their fancy new UI... It's still accessible via the old interface though.

pnut 11y ago

Right, and Facebook totally swears not to archive all conversations for "market research" and optimization. Seriously, their reputation for doing whatever they want with your information is well earned, what business would willingly expose their internal operations to this company?

devnull42 11y ago

So no onsite data storage and no at rest encryption? These are the reasons we have been having issues with Slack. I was hoping they would address these clear gaps in the enterprise market.

tomsun 11y ago

Soooo, facebook is trying to be slack?

xyzzy4 11y ago

So Facebook axed Parse, while devoting resources to this instead? Mark Zuckerberg is really losing it.

perlpimp 11y ago

Splitting domains of operation spurs need to sort people and interactions between domains. I worry about stuff leaking from my work account to "social" and vice versa. I do not organize my contacts in skype and I do not want to tag my friends into fb work. Facebook has been one of those enterprises that have sidestepped this problem by "tell me what school and when you have attended and I will tell you that you can message your alumni" type thing. About.me is in trend where resumes aren't enough anymore - people use it tell about themselves as human beings not corporate drones. Maybe this is the continuation of this trend. Friends(humans first not employees) working on cool things.

ckl1810 11y ago

This is merely Facebook sharing the way it does work at its workplace.

randiLee 11y ago

It look me longer than I would like to admit to realize this wasn't satire.

anonu 11y ago

I can't access this website at work. I think the first step would be to get corporate firewalls to open up!

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