
Facebook Unveils Facebook at Work - darklrd
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/14/facebook-at-work-ios-android/
======
howeyc
Awesome, pretty soon companies wont have to store any of "their" data on their
own servers.

Facebook - Company info/announcements/chat

OneDrive/Google/Dropbox - Company documents

VOIP Services - Company communications

All stored in clear-text obviously (or at least not encrypted by company using
the service before transfer to said services, same thing really).

I myself think this trend is hilariously ridiculous, but I'm in a shrinking
minority I assume.

~~~
berberous
Well, what's your threat model that you are worried about? I would imagine all
of these companies have much better security and reliability than most
internal IT departments. And I don't see them snooping for their own purposes.
The NSA can get what they want anyways.

The one big issue is subpoena's / third party doctrine issues, but I imagine
for many companies that's a decent tradeoff for the reduced IT overhead /
security / reliability issues. Other industries, like law, should obviously
avoid such services.

~~~
Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd
> And I don't see them snooping for their own purposes.

Well, Google does read your email to show you better ads. But they never made
a secret of that.

> The NSA can get what they want anyways.

If they really want to, yes. That doesn't mean one shouldn't try to make it as
hard as possible for them. They won't bother if their cost/benefit analysis
says you aren't worth it to get out the big guns. (Reliable 0 days aren't
cheap and using them too often soon makes them worthless.)

~~~
the_hangman
> Well, Google does read your email to show you better ads. But they never
> made a secret of that.

I really wish this trope would die already. Google is not a person. Google
does not read your emails. Employees at Google aren't sitting there reading
your emails. An algorithm scans your emails for certain keywords, and displays
ads based off of what it finds. That is not the same thing as reading your
emails, and it's ridiculous that a forum like this would fall for such fear
mongering.

~~~
Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd
I'd change that 'read' to 'scan' but I can't anymore. I really don't care
about that particular phrasing. Not being a native speaker I don't think I'm
even qualified to argue the semantics of the word 'read' and whether it can be
applied to an algorithm or not.

I was trying to point out that some level of snooping by the cloud providers
themselves is going on right now. Note that I tried to defend Google's
behavior by saying that it is no secret and people are opting into it
willfully.

~~~
Retra
I think the important point here is that you still have some anonymity in the
sense that your data is processed in the same way as everybody else's. Saying
"Google reads your emails" is basically a fear-inducing way of saying "Google
scans everybody's emails."

Yes, they scan your emails. But not _particularly_.

------
ThomPete
_" Lars Rasmussen, the engineering director at Facebook who is heading up the
project, had in his past once headed up one of the failed efforts at an
enterprise social network, Google Wave."_

Lars Rasmussen was also the guy behind google maps. Seems a little unfair to
set it up like the above.

~~~
epmatsw
Was Wave even a social network? I vaguely remember it being more like a real-
time Google Docs before Google Docs went realtime.

~~~
saraid216
The original vision was "email replacement".

------
jcrei
I'm very happy to see Lars Rasmussen releasing something new again. He's the
(ex-Googler) guy behind Google Maps and the much loved (and perhaps also
hated) Google Wave project. Google wave was (in my mind) one of those "ahead
of it's time" projects when it was released. I'm not aware of any significant
contributions he has had since his time in Facebook. So is this his first?

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
And Wave was a rehash of Ray Ozzie's Groove, which got bought by Microsoft
when they hired him, and then they shelved it. This was c. '97, so how much
more was Ozzie ahead of his time, and when is it going to be BE time for this?
I still want it. I think the problem with Groove was that it stored data on
your local machine, and replicated between clients, and the big companies
aren't interested. Best I can figure is that they want all that data on their
servers so that they can examine what's in it and how it's being used.

~~~
frik
Microsoft bought Groove in 2005 and renamed the client to Sharepoint Workspace
2010. It was not that great and it got canned.

[http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Groove](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Groove)

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
Well I never used it after Microsoft put it through their software
"enterprizer." I seem to remember reading a product announcement when they
released it, and understood that they had nerfed it pretty badly.

------
smackfu
Has anyone seen a work social network that wasn't a joke? We have one, and the
only use is that your director/VP asks their org to follow them, and then
posts various strategic stuff they want you to see. There's zero peer-to-peer
usage at all.

~~~
MadManE
I think this is because of the inherent inequality that exists at work. In a
typical social network, everyone is essentially "equal" when it comes to who
you know and interact with. At work, you necessarily are very closely involved
with people who hold significant authority over you. Because of this, you have
to act incredibly more guarded at work and on its related networks.

~~~
bduerst
That's definitely a big part of it.

For a social network to have value, you need users who are compelled to
frequently submit content. By adding a power structure, users have to evaluate
their decisions, which can generate anxiety or extra work, leading to a drop
off in contribution rate.

It's one of the reasons teenagers ditched Facebook once their parents joined.

~~~
daedecai
Do you have any data to back that up? Don't mean that in a snipey kind of way.
Fascinating observation.

------
forgottenpass
Isn't Facebook already Facebook for Work? I'm sanitizing my internet presence
for employment reasons and their moderation kills anything approaching NSWF so
facebook can be wide open on work desktops.

They're not naming any of their hot new collaboration tools, so they're just
ripping off google docs then?

~~~
vertex-four
In this case, it's a walled-off Facebook _about_ work. You can use all
Facebook's tools to communicate with your coworkers about things you're doing
at work, without making it public.

~~~
VLM
That happens already, with share to group which happens to contain friendly
coworkers. Only difference is linking it to corporate active directory such
that we won't be able to share to "work friends" group but will have to share
to the whole department. Probably lower overall use, possibly because of
negative gossip but also self censorship in that I know the work office cooler
club or whatever all talk about minecraft, but I'd think twice about having to
spam that to the entire department not just the people who are into it.

------
binarymax
I wonder what guarantees on data confidentiality will be offered? Facebook
doesn't have a good reputation when it comes to privacy. I do not believe any
serious workplace will trust them with handling any company data and IP.

~~~
antsar
The same way that no serious workplace trusts Google/Dropbox with handling any
company data and IP today, right?

~~~
lern_too_spel
Presumably, he's referring to SSAE-16 auditing, like for Google's products.
The problem of auditing suppliers of parts and services is decades old and
effectively already solved.

------
hosay123
Whoa, it had been so long since I saw a social network pivot into the business
space that I'd forgotten how desperate and overused a strategy that had become

------
applecore
It's 2008 all over again, when freemium enterprise social networking was still
hot.

------
ckluis
I wonder if they might put it on a subdomain. Facebook is blocked at my
company. That might make using Facebook@Work a little harder.

~~~
jcfrei
Maybe that's the point. They noticed declining traffic during work hours and
try to reestablish their access to bored employees at work by essentially
forcing IT admins to unblock the facebook domain.

~~~
crdoconnor
I think they might want to sell access to users' private account data to their
employers. This will give them an in.

They can pretend to sell collaboration tools while they sneak analytics with
interesting stuff on the users' personal facebook usage (and maybe browsing
habits) in along with it.

This won't come immediately, of course.

~~~
dcsommer
> I think they might want to sell access to users' private account data to
> their employers.

Why do you think that? User data is the crown jewel and competitive advantage
Facebook has over other companies. It would never give up that advantage. This
meme refuses to die somehow.

~~~
crdoconnor
Selling it does not necessarily mean giving up that advantage.

------
pearjuice
And here comes highly personalized B2B advertising. Smart move, if you ask me.
Wonder why they limit themselves to relatively large sized companies.

------
aestetix
So for those of us who don't have a Facebook account and refuse to create one,
this means our employer can force us to sign up?

~~~
reledi
That's up to you and your employer.

Edit: Worth pointing out that it's not really a Facebook account in the
typical sense. You can have an FB@Work account without having an FB account,
though it seems you can also use your FB account for both.

------
spydum
Sounds like tibbr, which works okay. My employer is pushing yammer as a
replacement, but as others have said, adoption is spotty. Bunch of senior
managers with time on their hands thr post popular platitudes and feel good
nonsense. Not very much information sharing goes on.

------
vishalzone2002
Yammer was twitter for work. Facebook rolled out its own version before anyone
else does. But thats pretty much it. The very fact of facebook having an
addiction component will work against it.

I think managers would think twice before introducing a collaborating software
where team would end up spending more time than actual work. I think for this
very reason softwares like work wikis, sharepoint are so successful.

Also from user point of view, I do not see myself using the same tool at work
and then at home. Hopefully they have a radically different UI rather than
just changing the logo with companies logo.

~~~
ssharp
We use Yammer at our company and it's much more like Facebook than Twitter.
It's not the be-all and end-all of our collaboration tech nor do I think
people spend more time on it than actual work.

------
jkaptur
"Users can then link their work and personal accounts together so that they
are logged into both at the same time." Wow, that's really different from what
I expected.

~~~
spacemanmatt
What could possibly go wrong!

------
xedarius
I couldn't work out from the article if you could run Facebook on your own
servers or not. This will be a massive hurdle to jump if they really want to
sell to enterprise.

~~~
forgottenpass
I see them targeting the market of businesses too small to run their own
communication infrastructure. The people using google docs and hangouts
because it's already there. Or Office 365 because they can't/don't want to
host internally.

Why would anyone already running their own communication want internal
Facebook? Because email lists aren't hip enough?

~~~
rblatz
I don't see it as an email replacement. I see it as truer to it's name. A
Facebook for your company.

Let's say you are going to do some work with Molly from the Customer Support
department. You don't really know much about her, so you bring her up on the
company Facebook, and you find out that you both went to the same university
around the same time. You also find out that she has experience in testing.
You also see a picture of her, so that you don't have to go walking around
customer service area of the office asking if anyone knows where Molly is
until she finally overhears you and introduces herself.

Is any of this stuff hard to set up internally? Not really, but someone has to
prioritize it, sort through existing options and pick one, or develop it in
house, there needs to be support, and maintenance. All barriers to
implementing something that can help foster a more open and collaborative
culture.

------
eldude
Honestly, I don't see anything here that will make them competitive with
offerings like Jive Software, currently being used by the majority of Fortune
500s and more SV companies than you'd think.

[https://www.jivesoftware.com](https://www.jivesoftware.com)

~~~
einrealist
Most important: I can run Jive in my own IT environment. At least I can defend
myself from espionage.

------
kyllo
I wonder what it would take to get a passable OSS substitute to Facebook going
in this space. You could host it on your own server(s) the same way you can
host your own internal wiki that looks/feels just like Wikipedia. Why don't we
have this already?

~~~
ComNik
Would you pay for that? In something like a GitHub Enterprise setting, closed
source but self-hosted?

Something like FB-Groups for organizations of all kind fell out as a byproduct
of our startup and we are toying with the idea of trying to sell that part in
isolation. Basically you get your own, hosted / self-hosted FB-Groups, plus a
bit more flexibility regarding permissions and group management. For example
you could introduce someone external into a sub-topic in one of your groups,
without exposing him to the rest of the group (not sure if that is possible
with FB groups).

[Edit: Grammar]

~~~
kyllo
I think that would be basically competing with Yammer, which is owned by
Microsoft.

------
jongos
It took them 8 years to figure out there's a market in Enterprise? I hope they
make it easy to convert from private FB Groups to 'Work' accounts because any
company I know who would use FB for work is already doing so using that
option.

------
arthurcolle
This is going to destroy Slack

~~~
erythrocyte
No, this is going to destroy Facebook.

Picture it this way:

    
    
      1. You show up to work, and Facebook is now mandatory. 
         It's attached to your real name, and Facebook 
         helpfully connects your real profile to all your 
         co-workers.
    
      2. You now have to delete ALL of your non-work contacts, 
         for fear of gossip contamination, and NEVER use 
         Facebook outside of work again.
    
      3. Everyone who has Facebook at work, now needs something 
         to fill the gaping void of recreational social media.
    
      4. A new upstart fills the void, and Facebook crumbles and
         implodes.

~~~
gnopgnip
This is a separate account from your existing Facebook account.

------
mindcrime
I think this could be a Good Thing for many firms, but let me add that some
firms will want something more customizable, and with better support for
integration with their other apps, content, events, etc. For the firms that
want something that's:

a. built by a company with an enterprise focus as it's core

and

b. built with integration with your other enterprise applications as a core
principle

c. is open source

Then I have another option for you.

[http://fogbeam.com/products.html](http://fogbeam.com/products.html)

[http://fogbeam.com/quoddy_enterprise.html](http://fogbeam.com/quoddy_enterprise.html)

[https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy](https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy)

------
_pb
*still not using Facebook

------
motters
If you're running a business and you want an internal social network then
you're _far_ better off installing redmatrix.

[https://github.com/friendica/red](https://github.com/friendica/red)

It's easy to deploy and you can do things such as end to end encryption, and
there are many sharing/privacy options.

If you install some version of Facebook then chances are they'll try to find
some way to exfiltrate or monetise your company data. Also, if you're not a US
company then 100% of everything you enter into Facebook is regarded as fair
game to be exfiltrated, stored, analysed, etc. Probably that's not in your
best interests.

------
ohnoesmyscv
Not sure why one would need a work specific social network. Work != social, at
least for me. I've never shared anything or wanted to on my fb with my work
colleagues.

~~~
rblatz
We were just talking about doing a work only social network, with basic bio
info, a photo, and background. We have been growing rapidly and it's getting
extremely hard to keep everyone's info straight. I know that it's going to be
useful for me since I end up working across departments fairly often. Do I
expect everyone to get value from it? No. Will it make the workplace magically
better? No. But it will give us the tools to be a little closer as a company,
and hopefully promote cross team communication.

------
debacle
I think they should change the name. "Facebook at Work" has gotten many people
fired. It might reduce friction to adoption, but maybe that's not the goal.

------
diverightin63
I feel bad for Yammer.

~~~
glitchinc
My first thought was, "So Facebook released Yammer?"

But after some thought...

It will be interesting to see how this will be differentiated from Yammer.
Yammer may actually benefit from this ... companies that are considering
workplace social networks may evaluate all options, and then realize that
Yammer has been out for quite some time and touts over 200,000 corporate
customers.

Many companies have Facebook restrictions in place, and I don't see that trend
reversing due to this announcement. Yammer, separate and distinct from
Facebook, may see a bump due to more companies "being interested" in work
place social networks.

~~~
pwelch
Agreed. I've used Yammer before and it's pretty decent.

If I was a company looking to use a "Social Network for Work" I would prefer a
separate product like Yammer instead of Facebook.

------
ThomPete
It might work because of Facebooks scale but it's not like there aren't a
million other FB like enterprise social networks out there.

------
scott_karana
I know it's not really a competitor, but I would _love_ to see Facebook (or
anyone else) eat LinkedIn's lunch.

So sick of their awful practices.

~~~
suttree
Working on it - www.somewhere.com - but they have a huge lead. As a networking
tool that nobody likes but everybody uses, that's quite some lunch :~/

------
einrealist
If it is not on-premise and completely shut from the outside, it does not
exist as a product.

What else could it be used for? Publishing news?

------
user3141592653
They have tried this before and failed,they will fail once more.

Even if they had something to offer, in the senior managers mind Facebook ≠
productivity.

------
kolev
What a waste of effort!

------
biomimic
Facebook is no where near being a true technology company like Google. So
facebook copied MySpace and is now copying LinkedIn. Neat.

~~~
jbverschoor
facebook got big when they copied twitter

~~~
biomimic
They also got big when they started scouring peoples inboxes for contacts, one
of the largest security breaches in Net history.

------
yuvadam
> By making this free, Facebook could potentially drive a lot more users to
> its wider network

Who would use "Facebook for work" that isn't already using "Facebook"?

~~~
smackfu
You can be mandated to use it for work.

