7 ms·

Facebook is building an enterprise product dubbed "FBWork"

35 points by onedev 12y ago

hawkice 12y ago
The major problems with email are over-communication and a lack of contextual priority. Facebook, of all companies, seems most likely to make these problems substantially worse.
- 001sky 12y ago
  The way some corporate IP and Privacy policies are worded this would be something as an employee to avoid. The last thing you want to do is co-mingle behavioural information between work and personal/business.
dapulselabs 12y ago
Meanwhile, if anyone is looking for this kind of solution right now, we are making a tool for companies and teams to collaborate and work better. Check us out at: https://dapulse.com/ https://dapulse.com/
- Torn 12y ago
  From reading the website, the impression I get of daPulse is a mix of project management tools with some social networking, viewed through the lense of task tracking. What's the appeal over something like JIRA?
  - dapulselabs 12y ago
    AFAWK, JIRA is tasks for R&D, period. daPulse is a collaboration tool, so R&D, design, marketing, management - everyone in the company uses it. It is a bit like you described, PM + social + tasks, but it's designed to help everyone focus on the 'big things'. What it really does is gives everyone in the company one unified view of top priorities, so everyone's in focus on what's important and it gets everyone collaborating with zero e-mails.
    - Torn 12y ago
      I think you're under-estimating JIRA! As well as task tracking, reports and categorisation there's all kinds of dashboards, agile views (swimlanes, etc), as well as social features like commenting and @mentioning.
- sutterbomb 12y ago
  Ironic that I see you guys advertising on FB all the time. Would love to chat about your marketing efforts there - from everything I've gathered it's a very difficult channel to scale for most businesses. (My email is in my profile if you're game.)
Dewie 12y ago
Your friends made you join facebook. Then your mom made you quit it. And eventually your boss pulled you back in.
- chrisgd 12y ago
  The Godfather for the 21st Century
  - marknow 12y ago
    +1 this... every time want to stop using FB, I get pressure from work and extended family who only communicate via FB.
    - josefresco 12y ago
      I'm one week into a Facebook boycott (my first) and already my mom asked me if I had seen something on Facebook about an old high school friend. Keep in mind, my mom isn't even on Facebook .... that's how pervasive it's become.
- snowbirdsong 12y ago
  Must be a generational difference - my mom & granny are the two biggest reasons I stay on Facebook.
  - laoba 12y ago
    Same here. Easiest way to share pics of the kids and keep them updated on our family since we live far away. Without my family on FB I would have left a while back.
    - josefresco 12y ago
      It's funny, to appease my Mom and others not on Facebook I setup a self-installed WordPress site to share family content. I then notify subscribers via email, which even these days still is an effective communication tool. It's actually worked (although publishing to it on my part isn't consistent), and makes me feel much better that my content is stored on my server, in a format I control almost completely.
ihsw 12y ago
Yet another reason to avoid Facebook. One has to wonder whether we will be doing our timesheet tracking/payroll in Facebook instead of $MISC_HR_SOLUTION.
bahman2000 12y ago
yammer could use some competition
- beej1981 12y ago
  Competition already exists. Almost every major enterprise software company minus Oracle. Microsoft does have Yammer, but IBM has Connections, Salesforce has Chatter, TIBCO has Tibbr. There is an independent, Jive. There are also upstarts like Slack. Facebook would be entering a market that is already crowded. I'm not saying they couldn't make a big splash, only that it's not monopolized by Yammer. If you give credence to IDC, IBM is actually the market share leader, with Jive in the second position and Microsoft in 3rd.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
rffn 12y ago
I thought this exists already: http://www.salesforce.com http://www.salesforce.com
threeseed 12y ago
So basically they are making a competitor to Yammer. Hardly surprising given that they have been without a serious competitor for a while now. Facebook could do some real damage there.
- beej1981 12y ago
  The space is actually quite crowded. According to IDC, IBM Connections leads the market, not Yammer. Salesforce, Microsoft, SAP, JIVE, Tibco, VMWare etc. etc. etc. make competing products.
  - reagan83 12y ago
    The IDC analysis report was based on market share of revenue, which placed IBM at the top of the list because IBM has done a great job finding customers to buy their product for more money than Jive & Yammer (aka: Microsoft). Because social products are much more about engagement and usage vs sales, it would be applicable for IDC to include that metric and weight it heavily in rankings of social enterprise software packages.
cordite 12y ago
I did not know much about Yammer before this. As I looked it up, Microsoft is a parent company, so it makes sense that Yammer comes with Office 365 integration. Reminds me a lot of the (buggy, modular, quirky) PHPFox (recently changed ownership name to moxi)
- buro9 12y ago
  Yammer appeared as a "Twitter within your organisation" solution that was basically free for individuals to use. Staff would sign up their team, and then use it like Twitter to keep their team up to date with whatever they were working on. The money comes in when a team member leaves... as individuals sign up, the company had no means to deny the individual access to these little spaces. So the company would purchase some plan or other, and be able to manage enterprise access. As someone who used Yammer in the early days, this felt like an extortion play. It was years before Microsoft purchased them, and somewhere around this time they had moved from short statuses to longer posts and various groups, files, etc... a real-time team collaboration space based around a stream of messages that started to look like "Facebook within your organisation". In many ways Yammer became what SharePoint should have been for the collaboration features. That's the v. brief history of Yammer.
Darshu 12y ago
According to TC it's not yet clear if it's going to be a competitor to Yammer / Slack or to LinkedIn. Either way, for a real collaboration tool that's more than a place to chat, and that has beautiful UI and is used by Uber and Fiverr and other cool startups with names ending with "er", try http://dapulse.com/ http://dapulse.com/
alttab 12y ago
Maybe not within companies, but potentially between companies. Oh wait, thats LinkedIn.
tootie 12y ago
https://honey.is/ https://honey.is/ exists. It's more like reddit for work though.
- paulrov 12y ago
  it exists alright, but why?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
paulrov 12y ago
> Facebook employees find using Facebook for work communication really useful Do they have a choice in the matter? Funny how this thread is now just (not so) covert spamming of peoples own product "solutions" to this "problem".
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
AznHisoka 12y ago
Facebook should build a social CRM. Facebook should build a social analytics company, takes Hootsuite outta biz. Facebook should build a social data company, take Gnip outta biz. Heck, they should build a search engine (Not Graph Search, that thing is silly hard to learn how to use)
skizm 12y ago
I don't get all the Facebook hate. Facebook only knows what you tell it. Put up a profile, don't post too much or at all, don't download the app (use the mobile version), don't use facebook connect, and don't use any facebook apps. Just use it to keep in touch or get back in touch with people you otherwise would not be able to. Sure, they're like any other company and will relentlessly push for your to share more and do whatever they can get away with to access more of your personal information, but that sort of comes with the territory. They are basically an identity management company after all.
- pilif 12y ago
  >Facebook only knows what you tell it. Put up a profile, don't post too much or at all, don't download the app (use the mobile version), don't use facebook connect, and don't use any facebook apps. And don't use any websites that use any of Facebooks third-party script embeds or use something like HTTPSwitchboard and make sure you never load anything from any present or future Facebook property. Also don't use any services Facebook has bought or will ever buy (I personally got bitten by WhatsApp and Moves). Sounds easy. Thanks for the advice.
  - skizm 12y ago
    Sarcasm aside, you're right. Facebook is now big enough that they can buy your info from other services. I suppose I would just recommend using a throw away email with facebook (one that won't match other services) and making sure you log out when you're done. I mean, if you check facebook semi-regularly there really isn't a need to get email notifications, but if you really want them, you can always forward them from your throwaway. I think that should be enough, right?
    - awj 12y ago
      Does it not sound ridiculous to you that we have to go to these length to prevent Facebook from having information we don't want them to have? The techniques that have been suggested are beyond the understanding, if not the capacity, of probably 90% of internet users. How are they to keep Facebook from knowing about them if they don't want it to?
notastartup 12y ago
Why are they doing this? Why haven't done this before? I feel that maybe they bet on other things to take off which hasn't and that now they are looking to directly take the wallet of large corporations. If they were as successful as Google when it came to online advertisement, they shouldn't need to do this. I take this as further cementing of the fact that they cannot give the returns to investors that is well expected and now overdue.
joeevans 12y ago
Oh crap. First google+, now facebook? I hate employers making me use these horrible things. I'm now going to avoid working for companies that do. > Facebook only knows what you tell it. Facebook collects lots of information on you if you're a member or not, and much more than you tell it. Don't believe me? Search on those keywords.
- joeevans 12y ago
  I realize talk is cheap... here's a link: http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/facebook-finally-admits-to-tracking-non-users-208996.html http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/facebook-finally-adm...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

35 points by onedev 12y ago

The major problems with email are over-communication and a lack of contextual priority. Facebook, of all companies, seems most likely to make these problems substantially worse.

001sky 12y ago
The way some corporate IP and Privacy policies are worded this would be something as an employee to avoid. The last thing you want to do is co-mingle behavioural information between work and personal/business.

dapulselabs 12y ago

Meanwhile, if anyone is looking for this kind of solution right now, we are making a tool for companies and teams to collaborate and work better. Check us out at: https://dapulse.com/ https://dapulse.com/

Torn 12y ago
From reading the website, the impression I get of daPulse is a mix of project management tools with some social networking, viewed through the lense of task tracking. What's the appeal over something like JIRA?
- dapulselabs 12y ago
  AFAWK, JIRA is tasks for R&D, period. daPulse is a collaboration tool, so R&D, design, marketing, management - everyone in the company uses it. It is a bit like you described, PM + social + tasks, but it's designed to help everyone focus on the 'big things'. What it really does is gives everyone in the company one unified view of top priorities, so everyone's in focus on what's important and it gets everyone collaborating with zero e-mails.
  - Torn 12y ago
    I think you're under-estimating JIRA! As well as task tracking, reports and categorisation there's all kinds of dashboards, agile views (swimlanes, etc), as well as social features like commenting and @mentioning.
sutterbomb 12y ago
Ironic that I see you guys advertising on FB all the time. Would love to chat about your marketing efforts there - from everything I've gathered it's a very difficult channel to scale for most businesses. (My email is in my profile if you're game.)

Dewie 12y ago

Your friends made you join facebook. Then your mom made you quit it. And eventually your boss pulled you back in.

chrisgd 12y ago
The Godfather for the 21st Century
- marknow 12y ago
  +1 this... every time want to stop using FB, I get pressure from work and extended family who only communicate via FB.
  - josefresco 12y ago
    I'm one week into a Facebook boycott (my first) and already my mom asked me if I had seen something on Facebook about an old high school friend. Keep in mind, my mom isn't even on Facebook .... that's how pervasive it's become.
snowbirdsong 12y ago
Must be a generational difference - my mom & granny are the two biggest reasons I stay on Facebook.
- laoba 12y ago
  Same here. Easiest way to share pics of the kids and keep them updated on our family since we live far away. Without my family on FB I would have left a while back.
  - josefresco 12y ago
    It's funny, to appease my Mom and others not on Facebook I setup a self-installed WordPress site to share family content. I then notify subscribers via email, which even these days still is an effective communication tool. It's actually worked (although publishing to it on my part isn't consistent), and makes me feel much better that my content is stored on my server, in a format I control almost completely.

ihsw 12y ago

Yet another reason to avoid Facebook. One has to wonder whether we will be doing our timesheet tracking/payroll in Facebook instead of $MISC_HR_SOLUTION.

bahman2000 12y ago

yammer could use some competition

beej1981 12y ago
Competition already exists. Almost every major enterprise software company minus Oracle. Microsoft does have Yammer, but IBM has Connections, Salesforce has Chatter, TIBCO has Tibbr. There is an independent, Jive. There are also upstarts like Slack. Facebook would be entering a market that is already crowded. I'm not saying they couldn't make a big splash, only that it's not monopolized by Yammer. If you give credence to IDC, IBM is actually the market share leader, with Jive in the second position and Microsoft in 3rd.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

rffn 12y ago

I thought this exists already: http://www.salesforce.com http://www.salesforce.com

threeseed 12y ago

So basically they are making a competitor to Yammer. Hardly surprising given that they have been without a serious competitor for a while now. Facebook could do some real damage there.

beej1981 12y ago
The space is actually quite crowded. According to IDC, IBM Connections leads the market, not Yammer. Salesforce, Microsoft, SAP, JIVE, Tibco, VMWare etc. etc. etc. make competing products.
- reagan83 12y ago
  The IDC analysis report was based on market share of revenue, which placed IBM at the top of the list because IBM has done a great job finding customers to buy their product for more money than Jive & Yammer (aka: Microsoft). Because social products are much more about engagement and usage vs sales, it would be applicable for IDC to include that metric and weight it heavily in rankings of social enterprise software packages.

cordite 12y ago

I did not know much about Yammer before this. As I looked it up, Microsoft is a parent company, so it makes sense that Yammer comes with Office 365 integration. Reminds me a lot of the (buggy, modular, quirky) PHPFox (recently changed ownership name to moxi)

buro9 12y ago
Yammer appeared as a "Twitter within your organisation" solution that was basically free for individuals to use. Staff would sign up their team, and then use it like Twitter to keep their team up to date with whatever they were working on. The money comes in when a team member leaves... as individuals sign up, the company had no means to deny the individual access to these little spaces. So the company would purchase some plan or other, and be able to manage enterprise access. As someone who used Yammer in the early days, this felt like an extortion play. It was years before Microsoft purchased them, and somewhere around this time they had moved from short statuses to longer posts and various groups, files, etc... a real-time team collaboration space based around a stream of messages that started to look like "Facebook within your organisation". In many ways Yammer became what SharePoint should have been for the collaboration features. That's the v. brief history of Yammer.

Darshu 12y ago

According to TC it's not yet clear if it's going to be a competitor to Yammer / Slack or to LinkedIn. Either way, for a real collaboration tool that's more than a place to chat, and that has beautiful UI and is used by Uber and Fiverr and other cool startups with names ending with "er", try http://dapulse.com/ http://dapulse.com/

alttab 12y ago

Maybe not within companies, but potentially between companies. Oh wait, thats LinkedIn.

tootie 12y ago

https://honey.is/ https://honey.is/ exists. It's more like reddit for work though.

paulrov 12y ago
it exists alright, but why?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

paulrov 12y ago

> Facebook employees find using Facebook for work communication really useful Do they have a choice in the matter? Funny how this thread is now just (not so) covert spamming of peoples own product "solutions" to this "problem".

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

AznHisoka 12y ago

Facebook should build a social CRM. Facebook should build a social analytics company, takes Hootsuite outta biz. Facebook should build a social data company, take Gnip outta biz. Heck, they should build a search engine (Not Graph Search, that thing is silly hard to learn how to use)

skizm 12y ago

I don't get all the Facebook hate. Facebook only knows what you tell it. Put up a profile, don't post too much or at all, don't download the app (use the mobile version), don't use facebook connect, and don't use any facebook apps. Just use it to keep in touch or get back in touch with people you otherwise would not be able to. Sure, they're like any other company and will relentlessly push for your to share more and do whatever they can get away with to access more of your personal information, but that sort of comes with the territory. They are basically an identity management company after all.

pilif 12y ago
>Facebook only knows what you tell it. Put up a profile, don't post too much or at all, don't download the app (use the mobile version), don't use facebook connect, and don't use any facebook apps. And don't use any websites that use any of Facebooks third-party script embeds or use something like HTTPSwitchboard and make sure you never load anything from any present or future Facebook property. Also don't use any services Facebook has bought or will ever buy (I personally got bitten by WhatsApp and Moves). Sounds easy. Thanks for the advice.
- skizm 12y ago
  Sarcasm aside, you're right. Facebook is now big enough that they can buy your info from other services. I suppose I would just recommend using a throw away email with facebook (one that won't match other services) and making sure you log out when you're done. I mean, if you check facebook semi-regularly there really isn't a need to get email notifications, but if you really want them, you can always forward them from your throwaway. I think that should be enough, right?
  - awj 12y ago
    Does it not sound ridiculous to you that we have to go to these length to prevent Facebook from having information we don't want them to have? The techniques that have been suggested are beyond the understanding, if not the capacity, of probably 90% of internet users. How are they to keep Facebook from knowing about them if they don't want it to?

notastartup 12y ago

Why are they doing this? Why haven't done this before? I feel that maybe they bet on other things to take off which hasn't and that now they are looking to directly take the wallet of large corporations. If they were as successful as Google when it came to online advertisement, they shouldn't need to do this. I take this as further cementing of the fact that they cannot give the returns to investors that is well expected and now overdue.

joeevans 12y ago

Oh crap. First google+, now facebook? I hate employers making me use these horrible things. I'm now going to avoid working for companies that do. > Facebook only knows what you tell it. Facebook collects lots of information on you if you're a member or not, and much more than you tell it. Don't believe me? Search on those keywords.

joeevans 12y ago
I realize talk is cheap... here's a link: http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/facebook-finally-admits-to-tracking-non-users-208996.html http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/facebook-finally-adm...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]