Eric Willis

Workplace by Facebook — Connect everyone in your company and turn ideas into action

91

Add a comment

Replies
Best
Ryan Hoover
Looks like a better version of Yammer, very different from Slack despite people making the comparison.
mountainmatt
@rrhoover Yammer never really worked for me. I'm also a little apprehensive about associating my facebook account (which is keep largely private for family and friends) to my identity at work.
Juan Jose Zevallos Coka
@rrhoover I thought it was like slack but reading your comment maybe we could use slack and Workplace at the same time.
erwin blom
@rrhoover Slack is communication for the tech savvy people, FB At Work will work for the rest of us ;-)
Steve Messer
@mountainmatt That would be the biggest turn-off for me, but I can see it working in other industries that rely on those bonds. Music promotion, for example.
Reony T
@rrhoover I don't see any similarities based on screenshots to be honest. Too distracting with the usual feed stuff too.
Derek Bytheway
Our company has been on Facebook at Work for almost a year now and nobody ever uses it which is really disappointing considering we have over 350 employees.
Mahieddine Cherif
@derekbtw like every entreprise social network... employees must be willing to use it, you can't simply put in a place a tool and expect your employees to use it
Hoan Do
@cherifmahiedine Any tool need an usecase. Your company maybe don't need a social tool. Everything is sales, phone and emails.
Derek Bytheway
@cherifmahiedine well we WOULD use it but there's no way of incorporating it into any kind of dashboard you already have. We have a dashboard that all employees use daily to look at sales records, inventory, and data input applications within. If they let you import your own tools, that would actually be very useful. But as for now, it's literally just a fork of Facebook.
Hoan Do
@derekbtw I think Workplace should add an internal CRM tool that can cover all your emails and sales. I found that not everything could change in one night. They want to kill emails but how to connect with clients and customers that do not have a Workplace account at their companies. And old emails and phone still live.
Jim Canto
@derekbtw Automotive is also way behind in general. Really tough to get user adoption in a low digital literacy environment. (Yours sounds more advanced than what I'm experiencing... kudos.) I'm attempting to sneak Ryver (Slack competitor.. and I'm not a fan of their mktg) because of it's layout.. and because I can collaborate with external vendors using private teams. Internal adoption is going very slow. Though, admittedly, I'm layering it in covertly. Does this Facebook feature provide a way to collaborate with external vendors privately... but within the interior walls of the group?
Ben Tossell
Facebook vs Slack (#TeamSlack) This is the TechCrunch article of the announcement (I get that Slack is the easiest 'comparison' to make in this space where it isn't tackling the same thing) Here is Zuckerbergs post on it: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/po...
Andreas Mitschke
Resembles wrike a bit. Slack seems far from this as slack is "easy" on the eyes and pretty tidied up. What I always wonder, where is the impact of the numerous UX designers, researchers and other interaction designers in facebook products. Every FB product feels so rough, dusted and totally not en par with today's startup products in terms of visual appeal. Anyways, I wished for this around 4 years ago, today, meh I'm locked-in in other established products.
Hoan Do
@andmitsch Many old people in large size companies. Facebook needs a design that is good for all. And I think they did well.
Andreas Mitschke
@hoandesign Broad audience reach has never been a sufficient argument against design evolution and daring design progress. It's the perfect formula for stagnation and security. Wonder how the iPhone would look like if they'd said "Wait, but we can't change the size, because we have a certain audience that is used to it". Questionable at best...
Hoan Do
@andmitsch It's not fast as we think. Why does emails still work now? It's good enough. We have many clients in our country Vietnam just said hate to whitespace, line icons and event flat design. It makes the design clean but all they think is waste of space and too simple, too lazy.
Ariella
My company has been using this for the past couple of months and it's not my favorite.
Austin Sandmeyer
@ariella_cg What is the reason it's not your favorite? (if you don't mind me asking)
Simon Bromberg
Pricing hard to understand: So it's only $1 / month if you have over 10,000 MAUs? EDIT: they added a little gray box that says "PRICING PER ACTIVE USER PER MONTH" .
✎ Andrew Warner
@shimmb i assume it's per user, but they really could be clearer.
Eric Willis
Workplace is now open to the public after 20 months of being in beta. It's enterprise-focused messaging and social networking for businesses.
Stowe Boyd
@erictwillis They say it's 'open' but when you sign up that ask all sorts of questions about company size etc., and you then hit the 'apply' key. Here's the blurbage 'We're making Workplace available to companies around the world. Enter your details and we'll be in touch soon. Our sales team will work with you to understand your needs and help launch Workplace across your organisation.' UK english, too.
Hoan Do
@stoweboyd @erictwillis They don't want trash sign up. But they need a demo account so we could test the feature. I think guys at Workplace still not optimize the landing page and onboarding for new sign up.
Ranjan
@stoweboyd @erictwillis Found this a bit annoying - with a bunch of splashy announcements and a price point that is about as mass market as it gets, they're still going to have a salesforce-style hard human sell. Those little details I feel are why Slack will win.
Some Guy
Eh. Seems like just another "me too" play by Facebook. The design is too similar to regular Facebook and users won't be able to remove the mental connection between the two. Looks like a glorified FB group with business-y beige background.
Sunny Paris
I still do not understand what Facebook is doing in this b2b business.
✎ Andrew Warner
Does having your coworkers one-click away from your weekend photos seem a little too invasive?
Zee M Kane
Convo (http://convo.com) deserves a shout out here. Been using it for years and though it could be with a touch of Slack's 'fun' elements it's been invaluable to my productivity and communication running a number of remote teams.
Austin Sandmeyer
Pretty competitive market, many are attacking it from all different ways. Platforms like Beekeeper (www.Beekeeper.io) are going after this market as well. Yammer would be competition in my opinion. Slack does a completely different purpose.
Hemanth Kumar Reddy
@as_austin I agree with you, slack is a chat tool and this is ESN. Finally they have entered into more competitive market where there are established players like Yammer (www.yammer.com) , zyncro(www.zyncro.com), Zoho Connect (www.zoho.com/connect) to name a few.
Austin Sandmeyer
@gopuhemanth very true. I think you would also find many of those competitors have volatile user adoption statistics ranging from complete inactivity to cluster hyperactivity.
Ying LI
Facebook Workplace vs. Yammer?
Gua Tabidze
I think, the next evolution is to share knowledge more freely  even across organizational boundaries where organizations are more comfortable letting content in & and using SaaS services. Usually, the benefits require behavioral changes. Slack did great work. Lets see how Facebook will be a great fit for all kinds of companies.
Tangerine

If you are working for a company that has multiple topics at the same time running in the one department/team thinking about a feed based collaboration could be a good option.

With Workplace you can organise your team in groups and discuss projects/topics via the comments on a post. This could help your team stay on topic and don't get distracted by another random comment in your chat history.

The (news) feed based way of communicating (FB) can work well for slow moving tasks or project overviews. I feel like a company with more than 50ppl could start to make real use of this kind of work.

The FB messenger really isn't on par with any of the major business chat's out their. So don't switch to FB if you really just wanna chat with your guys. You could, however, use it to supplement your Slack usage with some company feeds. But then you should save the money and use G+ which comes free with your G Suite subscription.

The pricing however is attractive. Starting at a about a dollar a month and employee it's way below industry average.

Pros:

Great, familiar design and use for your team. If you into feed based collaboration you should check it out

Cons:

The chat feature needs to ramp up it's features quickly to get on par with industry standards.

Alexander DiNardo
Seems Facebook is taking a page from the Google playbook-- build corporate versions of apps that employees love by having familiar features and UI with added access and security controls.
Edwin Tofslie
I am curious to see the adoption due to cross profile use. Slack has the benefit of keeping your profile very isolated to a work only type of environment. The idea of mixing my personal facebook with a work facebook is very unsettling.
Edwin Tofslie
@hoandesign Thanks for clarification. I do think though that just the thought that they are both on Facebook (at first glance) in general, feels wrong for some reason. I can imagine this being a turn off for many people. Almost wish this was a completely separate product. Will check it out more and see if they intermingle at all.
Greg 'X' Willis
I have a hard time seeing people actually use this based on the "concept" of what Facebook is too people. A "private" social network more Twitter in it's demographic usage than for business-oriented ventures. People like their labels, and I would rather Facebook focus on improving it's advertising and social platform more than diluting it with side projects.
Joshua Talley
My company is on Office 365, and has invested heavily in Yammer. It took off in Europe, but has been mostly flat in the USA. Facebook would be a total no-go.
Abe Bahgat
thanks but our company is sticking to slack