
Facebook at Work - nichodges
https://work.fb.com/
======
kriro
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.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Slack's been incredibly successful of late. You might not think of it as a
'social network', but it does most of what Facebook at Work is advertising
itself as.

~~~
Swinx43
Slack is definitely a better option than Facebook at Work in my opinion.
Social networks are a time suck at best and marketing one to an enterprise is
simply inviting cynicism and negativity from those people that actually have
work to do (obviously almost everyone except HR).

Slack is not positioned as a social network but as a productivity and
collaboration tool, a role it fulfils really well.

If I had to choose I would pick Slack over Facebook at Work any day of the
week.

~~~
hellbanTHIS
My first thought was Slack must have turned down Facebook's offer, thank the
gods. It's not too weird to ask coworkers to sign up for Slack, but it would
be really weird and probably unacceptable to ask someone who works for you to
sign up for Facebook for all kinds of reasons. I'd feel more comfortable
requiring employees to use Reddit at work, seriously.

------
kartan
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.

~~~
sschueller
So now the idea is to do your sensitive internal communications via facebook?

~~~
pmlnr
It's not worse than Slack, is it?

------
spdustin
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.

~~~
crivabene
Interestingly, Microsoft announced [1] yesterday that they're turning on
Yammer by default to all Office365 customers for free.

[1] [http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/02/microsoft-is-enabling-
yamm...](http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/02/microsoft-is-enabling-yammer-by-
default-for-all-eligible-office-365-commercial-customers/)

~~~
xyzzy123
It's so good they have to give it away...

------
droopybuns
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.

~~~
bobbles
Do you really think people would post the same stuff to their 'work feed' as
their 'personal feed'?

Actually you know what.. probably

~~~
system16
I didn't even realize it happening, but that's exactly what my LinkedIn feed
has become, complete with memes and motivational JPGs.

------
jdoliner
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.

~~~
encoderer
Facebook actually uses Facebook heavily internally. Groups, calendars, etc.
It's certainly not a mandate, it's used because it works for them.

~~~
jnpatel
I'd argue that they consciously _make_ it work for them internally, despite
lots of pain points solved by other tools better suited for the job.

For example, Zuck says he runs the company via Messenger - but a chat tool
without selective muting/@mentions (or equivalent) is bound to be messy at the
scale at which he's working. Similarly, Facebook's group chat isn't the best
archival tool, nor does it support features like merging posts or transferring
them from one group to another.

~~~
wyclif
You're assuming that Facebook internal is the same, feature by feature, as
commercial Facebook. I promise you it isn't.

~~~
scott_s
If they turned that version into a service that could run on-premises, inside
a company's network, then I think they could have a real chance at becoming
the communication and coordination medium for most companies.

------
kaushikt
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
Personally, I would say that "One of the best productivity hacks is to never
log into Facebook" \-- EVER!

:-D

~~~
Nicholas_C
Not logging into HN is also a good one.

~~~
softawre
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)

------
benatkin
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.

~~~
untog
But Slack is a chat service. I'm struggling to imagine what I would ever want
to see in my Work News Feed.

~~~
skewart
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.

~~~
MiddleEndian
This is the first time I've ever heard someone speak positively of Yammer.

~~~
skewart
Haha, I'm not entirely surprised. The UI is pretty dated, and overall it can
be kind of janky sometimes.

I'm curious though, what aspects of it do you usually hear people complaining
about?

~~~
cptskippy
When the first rolled it out and signed everyone up at my office people
complained all the time about the spam in their mailboxes. Then we figured out
how to delete our accounts. Now the only people who use it are those that are
trying to impress someone by giving the image of participation.

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

~~~
wesleyy
Do you have any sources? Not trying to be a dick but this sounds interesting.

~~~
gregcoombe
There are some interesting links in this recent Economist article:
[http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion-
maki...](http://www.economist.com/news/business/21688872-fashion-making-
employees-collaborate-has-gone-too-far-collaboration-curse)

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"

------
spotman
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-
androi...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/14/facebook-at-work-ios-android/)

~~~
spicyj
This marketing page is new this week, at least.

------
MehdiEG
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
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
Do UK engineers command salaries anywhere near SV level though?

~~~
wyclif
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.

~~~
nailer
For the same price as a grad in the US, you can get an Impbridge post
doctorate with 3 years post-doc experience. Get US investors, but hire
engineers in UK.

------
pcurve
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
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-t...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/09/facebook-for-works-pitch-to-
enterprises-is-unmatched-theres-no-training-required/)

------
Casseres
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
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
What are the situations where Yammer can help in terms of detecting
troublesome employees? That's an interesting use case / benefit.

~~~
cptskippy
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.

------
jpace121
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.

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

~~~
United857
As opposed to them being on Google or Microsoft's?

~~~
lern_too_spel
Those companies undergo IT industry standard audits.
[https://www.microsoft.com/online/legal/v2/en-
us/MOS_PTC_Secu...](https://www.microsoft.com/online/legal/v2/en-
us/MOS_PTC_Security_Audit.htm)
[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
remember when facebook employees got the master key to all accounts as a perk?
Yeah, totally trustworthy...

~~~
emilburzo
I haven't heard of this. Do you have a link with more details?

------
bobby_9x
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.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
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
In some industries though, self-hosted is a requirement.

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

~~~
caleblloyd
Because someone from marketing made the site, not someone from engineering

~~~
cm2012
Which is a good thing, in this case.

------
eCa
> For companies who get things done

[http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/is-it-
a-c...](http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/is-it-a-company-
who-or-a-company-that)

~~~
tristanj
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.

------
asadlionpk
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.

~~~
sophiebits
What? Product design questions aside, it uses the exact same code as "main
FB".

------
personjerry
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.

~~~
jonathankoren
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.

------
runn1ng
I just don't believe having Facebook opened at work will in any way _increase_
my productivity.

------
glossyscr
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.

------
Fede_V
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.

------
codeisawesome
These "slick" videos with ultra fake chirpy videos make me sick nowadays.

Oatmeal should draw a comic about this.

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

------
patrickbolle
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.

------
herbst
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.

------
rgovind
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
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.

~~~
r00fus
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.

------
rebootthesystem
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.

------
beatpanda
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?

------
narsil
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.

------
perlpimp
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.

------
eva1984
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.

------
TARRACARTER
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!

------
felixrieseberg
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.

------
andy_ppp
Something about this creeps me out.

Next up "Facebook staring at you watching you sleep".

------
rahulgulati
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.

------
efes
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.

------
devnull42
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.

------
whitegrape
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-
ch...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebookwork-vs-salesforce-chatter-
vincent-rochebrun-rodriguez)

------
eva1984
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
It doesn't provide value for the customer, but for Facebook. It's their
existing monetization model.

------
kmfrk
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.

------
freshyill
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?

------
ArtDev
Facebook for work is LinkedIn.

------
tedmiston
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?

------
waitingkuo
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
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.

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

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

------
nashashmi
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!

------
tyre
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.

~~~
guycook
"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
Couldn't help but laugh out loud. Well said!

------
kin
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
People didn't trust facebook with their data. That is an issue.

------
pnut
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?

------
samstave
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

~~~
RobbyMcCullough
In all seriousness, I don't know the onion article you're referencing and I am
wildly curious now...?

~~~
samstave
Its a joke, but:

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/21/fcebook-cia-
onion/](http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/21/fcebook-cia-onion/)

~~~
RobbyMcCullough
Thanks much!

------
nradov
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
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.

------
Sharlin
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.

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

~~~
erikpukinskis
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.

------
joshmn
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)

------
codesushi42
Really? After Slack, Yammer, and LinkedIn this is all they have to offer?

Totally uninspiring. DOA.

------
crispycrucnchy
[https://work.facebook.com/confirmemail.php?next=https%3A%2F%...](https://work.facebook.com/confirmemail.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwork.facebook.com%2F%3Femail&rd)

phew!

------
skybrian
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)

------
sangd
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.

------
NumberCruncher
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.

------
tallerholler
facebook's downfall - trying to be everything for everyone

------
basicplus2
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!

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

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

------
xyzzy4
So Facebook axed Parse, while devoting resources to this instead? Mark
Zuckerberg is really losing it.

------
jonesb6
Wouldn't knowing Facebook's profit model be enough to deter any company from
using it internally?

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

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

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

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

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

------
ckl1810
This is merely Facebook sharing the way it does work at its workplace.

------
ivanecky844
In direct competition with Slack, let's see how this panes out.

------
some1else
I need two things to consider this:

\- Like semantics (Like to mark as completed?)

\- Markdown

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

------
nness
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.

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

------
danielrm26
Seems like an obvious competitor to Slack.

------
tomsun
Soooo, facebook is trying to be slack?

------
ionised
This sounds nightmarish honestly.

~~~
jdpigeon
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.

------
Spooky23
Sweet. Bring Facebook data mining and privacy practices to the workplace!

What could go wrong!

------
heshuge
slack by facebook

------
oneJob
fuck this shit

------
voynich61
Never has it been more apparent that morality doesn't come into the equation
for Facebook.

~~~
jdoliner
Is there something glaringly immoral about this?

------
pandatigox
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.

~~~
victorvation
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.

~~~
herbst
Seriously does it not integrate with LDAP or something?

