5 ms·

"business version of Facebook" There's your first problem.

by asah 9y ago

Traubenfuchs 9y ago
Who thought "business version of Facebook" was a good idea?
- isotopp 9y ago
  My employer did. And while I was very extremely sceptical at first, I had to eat my hat on this. It's actually one of the best things for facilitation of enterprise cross-department communication and awareness that I have ever experienced in the last 33 years of my working life.
  - nightcracker 9y ago
    Could you explain what features make it so good for your use case?
    - isotopp 9y ago
      I could, but to actually understand you have to try out, because it's an experienced quality and not some a thing that is amenable to description. Before the corp FB instance we had Wikis, Email, Mailing Lists, Jabber and an internal "Youtube" like Video Store. It all sucked. With the FB instance, the awareness of what goes on in other parts of the company is much higher, the noise level is lower, communication is more timely and generally you feel less stressed out. Email numbers are down, mailing lists practically do not exist any more (except for machine communication such as commit messages), things organize neatly in FB groups, and you kind of automatically find the groups that are relevant to work. The Wiki hardly sees discussion any more, and is mostly documentation. There are a lot of problems in Workplace by Facebook, mostly in the messenger product (no spatial metaphor, i.e. no rooms, only groups, being the largest). But in general it has been an amazing improvement on what we had before.
      - Twisell 9y ago
        My boss is deseperately trying to convince me that my project wiki can painlessly be replaced by Microsoft Team (build upon share point). Yet this is utter bullshit every workaround he proposed to replace missing feature look like regressions that will make us spend more time on solving share point issue than on actually writing documentation. You seems satisfied with FB for business and you claimed it could advantageous replace multiple wikis. Can you develop your though cause from the outside it look like the same bullshit that salespersons will use to sell MS Team to gullible boss.
        krylon 9y ago
        > My boss is deseperately trying to convince me that my project wiki can painlessly be replaced by Microsoft Team (build upon share point). In my experience, the words "SharePoint" and "painless" do not exactly go well together.
        underwater 9y ago
        Facebook Work is a communication tool. It doesn’t replace your wiki. The only real affordable is Notes, which solves the “update email” case, but not evergreen documentation case. Facebook use Quip for wiki-like solution as well as some internal tools.
        Twisell 9y ago
        My bad op mentioned that they kept wiki for doc. Read to fast sorry.
      - dmitriid 9y ago
        Experience couldn't be more different for us. We also use the "Faceplace" as it has become "affectionately" known. Everyone just turns off the notifications on the freaking thing, so really important things are still sent out via email. It's corporate/business thing, right? And yet they kept the useless alrgorithmic feed. Just yesterday I couldn't find an important management post because it was buried below random crap from a dozen or so groups, and people, and events, and... Well, it also sends email for some (not all) notifications. The email preview contains a total of 6 words from the original text and forces you to go to the crap. Every single post including the really important ones are five lines of text with a "see more" link. Oh, and half of those texts are created as documents/notes (which are different from regular posts), reposted to half a dozen different groups that all show up in your timeline (nothing like seeing the same text 10 times I guess). And it continuously nags you to get their crap good-for-nothing Chat App (just look at the f*ing thing https://grumpy.website/post/0PSSXS3k8 https://grumpy.website/post/0PSSXS3k8). Facebook cannot even imagine that business needs of business clients are not driven by engagement numbers, or by MAUs, or by LTVs or by any metric that is relevant to Facebook. EDIT: Rephrased some sentences EDIT 2: Re: replies to my comments. "Oh, it's da bomb, only you need to <a list of multiple things to setup before it's even remotely useless>". Stockholm syndrome in full swing
  - realusername 9y ago
    I've used Yammer before and it was mostly useless so I'm a bit skeptical as well.
- wwweston 9y ago
  Facebook, apparently. It's not exactly a terrible idea, either. Facebook is arguably a form of groupware, and so I could see its potential in a work environment...
darklajid 9y ago
Came here for that. I .. wasn't even aware that this exists, but that seems awful on so many levels? What FB 'features' do you need in a company? I thought Slack is the go-to for cat pics and birthday gifs?
- isotopp 9y ago
  Slack does not even scale to corporate size, instance sizes are too limited. Also, they have no corp sales plan to speak of. Finally, wrong kind of comms - chat is ephemeral, and messenger is only a small part of what is needed or corp facebook offers. And Slack is lacking the necessary controls for a corp environment.
  - rootlocus 9y ago
    > Slack does not even scale to corporate size I don't understand what corporate size is. Care to give some numbers?
    - isotopp 9y ago
      Upwards of 20.000 employees in my case here, with some serious variance and fluctuation because of the work being seasonal.
      - johannes1234321 9y ago
        We have ~50k active users in our corporate Slack.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    > Slack does not even scale to corporate size, instance sizes are too limited. Also, they have no corp sales plan to speak of. Your information is outdated. Slack recently introduced an Enterprise product (on-premise AFAIK) where you can have multiple workspaces for each division, but auth is managed centrally and organization-wide channels can span across all workspaces. We're using it at SAP.
drcross 9y ago
Don't knock it until you try it. It's actually quite a good application of "social media" for a company because the domain is so specific.

"business version of Facebook" There's your first problem.

by asah 9y ago

"business version of Facebook" There's your first problem.

Traubenfuchs 9y ago

Who thought "business version of Facebook" was a good idea?

isotopp 9y ago
My employer did. And while I was very extremely sceptical at first, I had to eat my hat on this. It's actually one of the best things for facilitation of enterprise cross-department communication and awareness that I have ever experienced in the last 33 years of my working life.
- nightcracker 9y ago
  Could you explain what features make it so good for your use case?
  - isotopp 9y ago
    I could, but to actually understand you have to try out, because it's an experienced quality and not some a thing that is amenable to description. Before the corp FB instance we had Wikis, Email, Mailing Lists, Jabber and an internal "Youtube" like Video Store. It all sucked. With the FB instance, the awareness of what goes on in other parts of the company is much higher, the noise level is lower, communication is more timely and generally you feel less stressed out. Email numbers are down, mailing lists practically do not exist any more (except for machine communication such as commit messages), things organize neatly in FB groups, and you kind of automatically find the groups that are relevant to work. The Wiki hardly sees discussion any more, and is mostly documentation. There are a lot of problems in Workplace by Facebook, mostly in the messenger product (no spatial metaphor, i.e. no rooms, only groups, being the largest). But in general it has been an amazing improvement on what we had before.
    - Twisell 9y ago
      My boss is deseperately trying to convince me that my project wiki can painlessly be replaced by Microsoft Team (build upon share point). Yet this is utter bullshit every workaround he proposed to replace missing feature look like regressions that will make us spend more time on solving share point issue than on actually writing documentation. You seems satisfied with FB for business and you claimed it could advantageous replace multiple wikis. Can you develop your though cause from the outside it look like the same bullshit that salespersons will use to sell MS Team to gullible boss.
      - krylon 9y ago
        > My boss is deseperately trying to convince me that my project wiki can painlessly be replaced by Microsoft Team (build upon share point). In my experience, the words "SharePoint" and "painless" do not exactly go well together.
      - underwater 9y ago
        Facebook Work is a communication tool. It doesn’t replace your wiki. The only real affordable is Notes, which solves the “update email” case, but not evergreen documentation case. Facebook use Quip for wiki-like solution as well as some internal tools.
        Twisell 9y ago
        My bad op mentioned that they kept wiki for doc. Read to fast sorry.
    - dmitriid 9y ago
      Experience couldn't be more different for us. We also use the "Faceplace" as it has become "affectionately" known. Everyone just turns off the notifications on the freaking thing, so really important things are still sent out via email. It's corporate/business thing, right? And yet they kept the useless alrgorithmic feed. Just yesterday I couldn't find an important management post because it was buried below random crap from a dozen or so groups, and people, and events, and... Well, it also sends email for some (not all) notifications. The email preview contains a total of 6 words from the original text and forces you to go to the crap. Every single post including the really important ones are five lines of text with a "see more" link. Oh, and half of those texts are created as documents/notes (which are different from regular posts), reposted to half a dozen different groups that all show up in your timeline (nothing like seeing the same text 10 times I guess). And it continuously nags you to get their crap good-for-nothing Chat App (just look at the f*ing thing https://grumpy.website/post/0PSSXS3k8 https://grumpy.website/post/0PSSXS3k8). Facebook cannot even imagine that business needs of business clients are not driven by engagement numbers, or by MAUs, or by LTVs or by any metric that is relevant to Facebook. EDIT: Rephrased some sentences EDIT 2: Re: replies to my comments. "Oh, it's da bomb, only you need to <a list of multiple things to setup before it's even remotely useless>". Stockholm syndrome in full swing
- realusername 9y ago
  I've used Yammer before and it was mostly useless so I'm a bit skeptical as well.
wwweston 9y ago
Facebook, apparently. It's not exactly a terrible idea, either. Facebook is arguably a form of groupware, and so I could see its potential in a work environment...

darklajid 9y ago

Came here for that. I .. wasn't even aware that this exists, but that seems awful on so many levels? What FB 'features' do you need in a company? I thought Slack is the go-to for cat pics and birthday gifs?

isotopp 9y ago
Slack does not even scale to corporate size, instance sizes are too limited. Also, they have no corp sales plan to speak of. Finally, wrong kind of comms - chat is ephemeral, and messenger is only a small part of what is needed or corp facebook offers. And Slack is lacking the necessary controls for a corp environment.
- rootlocus 9y ago
  > Slack does not even scale to corporate size I don't understand what corporate size is. Care to give some numbers?
  - isotopp 9y ago
    Upwards of 20.000 employees in my case here, with some serious variance and fluctuation because of the work being seasonal.
    - johannes1234321 9y ago
      We have ~50k active users in our corporate Slack.
- majewsky 9y ago
  > Slack does not even scale to corporate size, instance sizes are too limited. Also, they have no corp sales plan to speak of. Your information is outdated. Slack recently introduced an Enterprise product (on-premise AFAIK) where you can have multiple workspaces for each division, but auth is managed centrally and organization-wide channels can span across all workspaces. We're using it at SAP.

drcross 9y ago

Don't knock it until you try it. It's actually quite a good application of "social media" for a company because the domain is so specific.