
Facebook at Work is launching next month - nedsma
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/27/facebook-for-work/
======
CaptainZapp
Would you trust Facebook with your internal corporate communications and by
extension the company's innermost secrets?

Good luck to Facebook in getting traction with corporate customers with the
most atrocious privacy record of just about any company.

~~~
ffggvv
Would you trust Facebook with your personal communications and by extension
yours and of your family innermost secrets?

Good luck to Facebook in getting traction with techy customers with the most
atrocious privacy record of just about any tech passionate.

/s

Just look at any facebook thread and see how many HN readers use it.

The stasi wasn't enough of a lesson.

~~~
scholia
If you work for a big company then you may already be a member of a Facebook
"network" of company employees based on email addresses. (I was joined to
one.) Seems to work in much the same way as college addresses.

I've also seen company employees start their own closed, private Facebook
groups for work purposes because the in-house services were terrible. (I was
joined to one.) It's easier than getting a group of people to sign up for a
separate third-party service. (Tried that. Didn't work.)

I assume Facebook noticed this phenomenon and decided to improve on it, and
exploit it.

I don't expect most users see a problem because they already trust Facebook
with their personal information. And I wouldn't be surprised if users trust it
more than Google, which now stands for surveillance-based advertising.

~~~
tdkl
> I've also seen company employees start their own closed, private Facebook
> groups for work purposes

This would probably get them fired in certain companies with responsible
information policies.

> I don't expect most users see a problem because they already trust Facebook
> with their personal information.

Which is wrong as naive in the first place.

> And I wouldn't be surprised if users trust it more than Google, which now
> stands for surveillance-based advertising.

Facebook stands for social manipulation advertising. Pick your poison.

~~~
scholia
_> This would probably get them fired in certain companies with responsible
information policies._

Sure, but if people followed the rules, almost no work would get done. (In the
UK, "working to rule" is a form of industrial action that's only a little
short of a strike.)

 _> Which is wrong as naive in the first place._

Yeah, more than 1.6 billion people are naive and wrong.

 _> Facebook stands for social manipulation advertising. Pick your poison._

How does that work, then?

Otherwise, there's an ethical difference between sharing information
voluntarily, for their own benefit -- which people do on Facebook -- and
Google's clandestine tracking, which is for Google's benefit.

------
wodenokoto
Most companies don't have a code repository or file bug reports, yet almost
every comment seems to talk about this.

Most companies need a platform where employees are registered, can communicate
and can be looked up, and preferably a platform that employees also use.

Facebook has shown itself to be a platform people like to use, a platform that
works well on desktop and mobile, can do users, groups, schedules etc.

I can see why it might be good for a lot of companies that have an unused
custom Intranet with an empty bulletin board.

------
nedsma
This seems particularly well suited to non-IT-development workflows, like
those in marketing and sales agencies, various organizations that already
intensively utilize FB for their businesses by further providing a seamless
integration between workplace activities and public/customer related ones.

What about webhooks, e.g. for CI and Github related processes, or about bot
support?

~~~
tdkl
> like those in marketing and sales agencies, various organizations that
> already intensively utilize FB for their businesses

So basically same bullshit selling industry related to ads as Facebook.

------
aws_ls
_" Facebook will just have to conquer the stigma that it’s for fooling around,
not getting work done."_

This. After offering people, at work, trillions of hours of entertainment, now
its going to help make people more productive.

But it will have a huge brand problem. _Facebook_ has become an adjective for
people slacking it out. Example, an irritated spouse "you spent the entire day
on Facebook". Many IT companies' firewalls has Facebook at the top of the
banned sites, during office hours.

All said, it surely can do it. But if it succeeds, it will be a bit like a
porn site also deciding to become a MOOC and succeeding at it.

------
hitr
Facebook might be eyeing the same crowd which is using Yammer or saleforce's
chatter offering.I think if they start with a free tier like yammer and then
go from there,lot of people might start using it as people are already
familiar with Facebook.In my company i don't see people using yammer although
it is heavily publicized. I think facebook has a better chance of becoming
social network for work than yammer or chatter!

------
wilmo
Is Facebook trying to be slack now?

~~~
basch
Facebook has been working on this since before June 2014. It has been in a
private beta for 2 years. [https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/facebook-at-
work/](https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/facebook-at-work/)

------
whitecarpet
Facebook feels a bit lost, rushing from one opportunity to the next. Remember
the Facebook Messenger with bot api beginning of the year? Zuck created a big
buzz and promised a soon to come bot marketplace, which haven't launched yet.

And now FB for work? FB's DNA is about anything but work.

~~~
Xunxi
Most organizations would rather keep staff away from Facebook as long as
they're not in the social media marketing enclave. The temptation of drifting
unto your personal Facebook account instead of Facebook for work makes this a
laughable proposition but there's always a customer for every product no
matter how shitty it is.

------
GrumpyNl
Best idea ever. Lets use Facebook for our business conversations and pay them
for that service as a bonus. If you bring this up as an option in a business
conversation, i don't want to work with you.

~~~
eli
Because you... don't like Facebook? Ok. But I don't get your hostility.

~~~
GrumpyNl
They will have access to your business conversations. You have literally
someone from facebook taking notes.

~~~
eli
Do you feel that way about Gmail too? I respect the opinion but it's
definitely in the minority.

The TOS will no doubt prevent them from using any proprietary data or "note
taking"

------
josefresco
"It should find onboarding users easier than many SaaS tools since people will
already have a login, password, and know how to use it. "

Does that mean employees sign into Facebook at Work with their personal
Facebook credentials?

That doesn't seem to make sense, but then why/how is the Facebook registration
process better?

~~~
conradfr
No, it uses your work credentials and your account is created for you.

We have it at work and I was skeptical at first but it's not that bad. There
is no concept of friends but you can follow specific people. Mainly it's based
on groups so in the end it's like a stripped down Facebook that acts as a
glorified front-end for mailing-lists.

I don't know how much they (will?) charge by user though.

~~~
josefresco
If "corporate" or someone in the company sets accounts up ahead of time, how
does Facebook have any advantage in this space? That same process would be
possible with any software...

------
themihai
I thought there is already a 'facebook at work' named Yammer. Not that I found
it useful in small start-ups but it makes sense in large organisations.

~~~
rm445
Not just Yammer but Sharepoint, Sway and Delve. For companies that are bought
into the whole Office 365 thing, there's actually a pretty comprehensive
'company social network' offering.

------
a_imho
I don't really see a point, partly because social and work don't mix in my
dictionary, partly because I consider Enterprise Communication a solved
problem. What is the incentive to move away from e.g. an already integrated
Atlassian stack?

Maybe it can be an option for new companies? It is hard to tell without the
pricing information.

~~~
codingmyway
Exactly, social and work don't mix. Most want them kept well apart. No way I'm
letting FB link my work with my social lives and no way I'd trust them not to.

There is always the risk of them buying LinkedIn but people aren't going to
make it easy.

~~~
wormseed
"You just create a new Facebook at Work account to connect with coworkers.
This account is separate from your personal Facebook but works in similar
ways." ([https://work.fb.com](https://work.fb.com))

~~~
pmlnr
Riiiiight.

~~~
dingaling
They _absolutely_ will not mix personal and work Facebooks.

Plenty of companies have blocked [www|m].facebook.com at the firewall, for
reasons of productivity and data protection. Facebook-the-company will not
jeopardise the chances of adoption of this product by doing anything that will
make work.facebook.com fall foul of a similar fate.

Pity they didn't just call it Workbook, then we wouldn't have had all this
confusion. Or Workface :)

~~~
pmlnr
Mix? No. Share? Of course they will.

------
meira
They are going to fail terrible.

