Not content with using Facebook for personal use? Well, the social network that already consumes many hours of your day may soon be one of your company’s go-to productivity tools.
Facebook is turning its focus to an office-focused collaborative app on the web, Android, and iOS. To begin with, Facebook at Work will only be available to a limited number of companies involved in a small pilot to start. The platform itself is still in its infancy, which may explain why only a few partners are participating for now. The app will have the same look and feel that Facebook currently has, but there are no ads in the “At Work” version, nor does Facebook keep track of any corporate user data.
Rather than making people endure endless office email chains, Facebook seems to think it’s found a better way. Existing Facebook features like groups, events, messaging, and even the news feed will work well as office productivity tools. But there’s no need to worry about your work colleagues seeing that drunken night out picture or the cat memes you love. There’s going to be a clear separation between professional and personal profiles; Facebook At Work accounts aren’t visible to people outside pilot companies, which is good news for companies sharing sensitive data.
With Facebook At Work, Mark Zuckerberg will be taking on office heavyweights like Microsoft’s ‘Yammer’ and Google. It’s not clear how the social network plans to profit from At Work; so far, there’ve been no details on whether Facebook ultimately plans to charge businesses to use it or what those rates would be. But the first step is getting in the door, and Facebook’s beginning that effort today.
However, I can’t help but think there are already enough great productivity tools for the workplace – Evernote, Trello, Podio, Wunderlist, Redbooth……I could go on. And this is not the first time we’ve seen a big name venture into this field – Google Wave anyone?
Would you consider using Facebook at Work for your company? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.