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Facebook at Work

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291–300 of 304 posts

Re: Facebook at Work

#291

Does this work in China? We're considering giving it a try but the biggest concern is that one of our office is located in China.

probably not. wit.ai and other FB services resolve to the same blocked IP ranges. Then again, slack is slow as heck in china. what other services have you considered? WeChat for work is annoying with the disappearing messages and clunky desktop clients.

Re: Facebook at Work

#292
post #165

I've seen a couple of the "let's bring social networks to the workplace" products and quite frankly none have impressed me so far. The real problem is not providing great technology but actually getting people in corporate environments to use it in a meaningful way. These projects usually end in the same manner...network is rolled out, used for a couple of weeks and fades into obscurity rarely used (and often leaving…

I work in a small company where we wanted to use these actively. Reasons they fail: - Nobody is sitting there waiting for their news feed to update. - Nobody is posting information there as they would with friends because THEY ARE AT WORK, they worry their boss will see something stupid. This is why memes and other things rarely get posted on work networks. - Nobody wants to seem like they are slacking off talking on…

In another comment[1] I mentioned I've found use of a work social network valuable/meaningful - I think part of the reason our observations/experiences are so different is that you work in a small company and I at a large one. Not everyone can be expected to make use of it (much like not everyone uses social media outside of work) so I think for it to succeed the company has to be of sufficient size so that the portion using the social network is enough to provide value.

As for some of your specific points:

> Nobody is sitting there waiting for their news feed to update.

I check the feed in the morning and usually again in the afternoon. It's not expected to be something you stare at for eight hours a day.

> Nobody wants to seem like they are slacking off talking on social networks instead of working (even on the work one).

Think that's more of a company culture issue - our use of it is appreciated/encouraged.

> No memes and other fun related things, nobody cares and nobody checks.

The vast majority of posts are work-related but we have plenty of groups strictly for non-work/fun purposes (e.g. we have a group for discussing video games).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11026577

Re: Facebook at Work

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! Although, I am curious about some of the privacy concerns that are being raised. To further your point, I think Facebook's timeline dynamic complements Slack quite nicely. Slack is great for broad, real-time communication, whereas Facebook posts can be much more hyper-focused and the conversation can revolve around the specific topic over a long period of time. For example, we have a development channel in o…

What if some features of Google Wave are added to slack so that threaded conversations can take place.

I'm not too familiar Google Wave. I was thinking about it a bit more before I went to bed last night, and the internet has always had chat and message-board style communication. They've always been complementary.

Slack _could_ try to tackle this, but I feel like it would need to be a different format than the chat room and it would be moving away from their strength.

Re: Facebook at Work

#294
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll need to qualify that critique, because the SharePoint installs I've consulted on have ended up with quite a high acceptance and use rate and have seen employees self-elect (without forcing them) to stop using email and shared drives for file collaboration). It's possible your experience with SharePoint was more an issue with who configured it. Or that you're thinking of SP2007?

SharePoint is really good for shared files. But that is what it was created for. It is called Microsoft Office SharePoint. If you turn on Publishing Pages you can make is work as in intranet portal. But you have to work at it, there is a bit of friction involved in doing something as seemingly simple as making a webpage. The issue tracker/tasks feature is... "usable". I wouldn't use SharePoint for anything else than…

Exactly this. I want to clarify- I'm not a sharepoint hater. It just has some uglies that prevent people from easily posting stupid things.

If you are going to post something stupid, you have to be MOTIVATED to do so on sharepoint.

Re: Facebook at Work

#295
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be built primarily around asynchronous communication, not synchronous.

It's only asynchronous is you have willpower, which is finite and easily exhausted, and if there's no expectation of realtime response on the other end, which there nearly always is these days. Whoever comes out with a viable system that is explicitly async (like mailman, or a good secretary) will really benefit humanity.

Check out TMail21 ("Power Threads for Teams". It is explicitly designed as an asynchronous communication platform. Furthermore, it is being integrated into all of the chat services like Slack, Hipchat etc. to avoid balkanization between chat and asynchronous communication.

Re: Facebook at Work

#296

This sounds nightmarish honestly.

Absolutely, like the future envisioned in Her where everyone's spinning their wheels in a fake economy, babied by technology, and all feeling incredibly lonely and hollow on the inside.

Re: Facebook at Work

#298
post #241
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, as is already the case with a lot of us millenials: We have fb. Everyone we know has fb. Everyone we get to know is added to fb. There is no distinction between private life and work life. Fb is where we keep track of who we know. Fb is where we ask around if anyone knows of a company looking for a person. Fb is where we ask around if any person is looking for a company. Fb is where we group text. Fb is where we…

I don't know about you, but my FB is a free speech zone. I don't think that overlaps well with FB at Work in terms of usage and social patterns.

My FB is also a free speech zone. But so is my workplace. If someone doesn't like the things I like to say, then they shouldn't talk to me.
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