Will your boss 'like' it? New Facebook app allows users to stay tuned at work
Facebook has launched a new app, Facebook at Work, created exclusively for use within a company to interact with co-workers. The new service will be competing against communication tools offered by Google, Microsoft and IBM.
As part of the testing program, the new app, only available in America, will be free of charge and won't feature any ads. Facebook has not said which companies are involved in the pilot program, but according to spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana, some have offices around the world.
@jasonwstein Wonder if it has the diverse set of 3rd party integrations @slack already has set up
— susheel khamkar (@skhamkar) January 14, 2015
Which business comms software should we use to replace email: Facebook for Work or Plurk Enterprise Edition?
— Prof. Jeff Jarvis (@ProfJeffJarvis) January 15, 2015
To set up a work account, your company must be using Facebook at
Work. Things you share using your work account will only be
visible to others at your company. From the app, you can still
access things shared publicly on Facebook. When creating your
work account, you have an opportunity to connect it to your
personal account, so you can switch between the two accounts
using the same username and password for both. Your username and
password aren't shared with your employer, however.
“Facebook at Work’s strength is that we’ve spent 10 years and
incorporated feedback from 1 billion active users,” the
engineering director at Facebook, Lars Rasmussen, who is heading
up the project, told Techcrunch.com. “All of that is embedded
now in the same product but adapted for different use
cases.”
“When Mark [Zuckerberg, the CEO] makes an announcement he
just posts it on Facebook at Work,” Rasmussen said.
The customized work social networks are hosted on Facebook
servers in the Internet cloud. Each company using Facebook at
Work controls any data shared by its employees, however.
The California-based company says its new app, which they have
internally used for many years, is not the same thing as Business
Manager.
"Facebook at Work is a tool for co-workers to communicate and
collaborate in a professional environment on Facebook. Business
Manager is a tool for businesses to manage ads and Pages,"
Facebook says on its website.
When you share something from your work account, you can share it
with everyone at your company or make it only visible to you by
selecting the "Only Me" option. Posts set to "Only Me" won't
appear in your colleagues' "News Feeds" unless you tag them in
the post. If you share something with everyone at your company,
anyone with a work account at your company can see it, but it
remains invisible to people outside of your company. Meanwhile,
the people who manage Facebook at Work at your company can access
anything you share from your work account, just as they might
access your work emails and other work files.
The launch of the new app comes at a time when Facebook’s rate of
growth is leveling off in the US, according to the latest survey
of social media use by the Pew Research Center. The Pew survey
found that 71 percent of US online adults reported using Facebook
in September 2014, unchanged from the same amount last year.
Analysts say, however, the social network has nothing to worry
about in the near future.
"Facebook can point to a wide range of factors which will sustain
growth through 2015 and beyond, as increasing share of spending
from small businesses and large brands alike as well as ongoing
improvement in focus on performance based marketers will all help
to sustain rapid growth," a senior analyst at Pivotal
Research Group, Brian Wieser, wrote Wednesday.
