Published on the 11/10/2016 | Written by Donovan Jackson
Once a dirty word on the job, world’s biggest social network makes a play for the office…
Offices are no longer safe from the scourge of Facebook, with the all-conquering social network officially taking the wraps of its ‘Workplace’, another social network for business. Workplace has been in the works for some time now, with Mark Zuckerberg’s leviathan trialing the product, formerly known as Facebook at Work, for over a year.
Another, because social networks for business are hardly uncommon; Yammer and Slack are probably top examples of the ‘genre’ if it can be called that. The major difference between Workplace and the regular Facebook, which sees billions of people around the world essentially wasting precious hours of their lives chasing ‘likes’, is that Workplace is not free. Instead, it has a ‘per user’ model, for a couple of bucks a month.
Facebook said in a statement that over 1000 organisations are using Workplace already, while a global ecosystem of partners ‘like Deloitte or Microsoft’ has also been introduced.
Under 1000 active users, and you’ll pay US$3; $2 for the next 1 001-10 000; and $1 for any more than that. A generous 3-month free trial applies, too.
Say what you like about Facebook, it is an enormously useful tool for collaboration, keeping in touch and even as a repository for information, much of it apparently random or arbitrary, but useful nonetheless. So, when the company says it has ‘brought the best of Facebook to Workplace’, it’s probably worth sitting up and taking notice.
Among the features which are bound to come in handy include unlimited file, photo, and video storage; unlimited team and project groups; and live video streaming. All of these services are no doubt already in place for most companies, some of which are likely paying top dollar for it too. However, whether or not a weaselly parallel system for storing company information, even if on the cheap and convenient, is desirable, will remain to be seen.
Other intriguing options include monitoring tools for IT teams, secure collaboration between companies, single-sign on (SSO) support and integration with G Suite, Okta, OneLogin, Ping and Windows Azure AD. There’s a tiny bit of fine print about a ‘fair use policy’ for unlimited features, too.
Facebook tends to produce love/hate reactions even within its active users. That’s hardly surprising, given that some research has shown that ‘social networks’ can cause antisocial behaviour as well as general unhappiness. Email is already notorious for disrupting ‘in person’ interactions, as we tend to pop one of those rather than chatting to a colleague over the cubicle wall; will Workplace further drive down our willingness and propensity for speaking with real people?
Time will tell. Check it out here.
