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Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses

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Re: Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses

#221

Post by pmlnr »

Let's count.

According to https://workplace.fb.com/pricing/, it's $1-$3 per user.

A cheaper server is ~$7k. It means that a company of of 9k personnel ( which is not too small ) will produce $18k per month. That can buy 2 servers per month and maybe cover some of the bandwidth costs.

To get a rack of servers - which I believe is the minimum to actually serve a company of this size - you'll need to have them on board for about 2 years (!) before profit starts to flow in. Unfortunately by that time you'll need start replacing the servers, since they have ~3 years of warranty these days.

For me this looks like no profit, which could mean two things:

1. The pricing is deliberately low, so it's either going to be raised later or it's covered from other parts of the company, and this is a step only to buy into an area currently covered by others.

2. The will use the data you provide for other purposes.

( 3. Both. )

With the first scenario, this will probably not live too long; a few years, maybe, but it's hard for me to believe that they would just pump money into this, just to eliminate others, but you never know.

With the second scenario... corporate espionage becomes obsolete.

Re: Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses

#222

Post by soft_dev_person »

Pamar wrote: post #57
gjolund wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last place I want to have work related conversations stored is FB servers.

I work in an European company. I doubt this will get any traction outside of US.

Norway is one of the major beta markets and full of early adopters. Though some of the companies among them likely just want to be one of the cool kids.

Re: Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses

#223

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

pmlnr wrote: post #221

Let's count. According to https://workplace.fb.com/pricing/ , it's $1-$3 per user. A cheaper server is ~$7k. It means that a company of of 9k personnel ( which is not too small ) will produce $18k per month. That can buy 2 servers per month and maybe cover some of the bandwidth costs. To get a rack of servers - which I believe is the minimum to actually serve a company of this size - you'll need to have them on board…

Could use something like GNU social, and then could keep the network self-hosted and private, and not worry about being locked into possible future price-hikes. https://gnu.io/social/

Re: Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses

#224

Post by blahi »

dbg31415 wrote: post #16

Yes, just what I want... more crap from Facebook. I've been so very satisfied with how much of my personal data they sell to marketers thus far, I really want them to start tracking me at work too. Hopefully they will pair the launch with an aggressive sales campaign targeted at people in HR so I won't get a say in the matter and it'll just be rolled out for my coworkers without our input. That would be just swell.

Hey, I'm wondering, how exactly does facebook selling ads against your data affect you negatively?

Re: Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses

#225

Post by justanton »

eatbitseveryday wrote: post #194
justanton wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree with you on what you said. But how do you deal with the problem, when you have to, say, create an event and make people aware of it? Are there any alternatives to FB?

> create an event and make people aware of it? Send an email and CC everyone you want to invite?

that could work, if you already know all the people you want to invite. but if you want to make people outside your circle aware of your event? like a hackathon or a party. This is the only thing that keeps me on FB, and it's very frustrating

Re: Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses

#226

Post by tzakrajs »

dexterdog wrote: post #111
gjolund wrote: post #39

Perfect, I was just thinking that I need another messanging app in my life.

Soon I'll have one for each person I communicate with. Then it will make sense for each person to run his own.

Oof, that is too real.

Re: Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses

#227

Post by charlesdenault »

pmlnr wrote: post #211

Is it just me or is this somewhat a contradiction? "Your Workplace account is separate from your personal Facebook account." https://workplace.fb.com/trust/ How do I create a separate username and password for my Workplace account? To separate your personal account from your Workplace account: Go to your Security Settings and click Sign Up Manually Enter and confirm a New Password Click Unlink Account Note: Once your…

See other comments regarding employer being able to create an account via POST request. I'd assume that's the only way to create clean separation, even then I don't doubt they'll be able to fill in that gap!

Re: Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses

#228

Post by kriro »

Down the road, this should also integrate well with their VR plans.

There's quite a few companies they will not be able to sign up unless they provide an on premise solution (which I doubt they are interested int) and I have a feeling that even if they push the message hard it'll not be trivial to not have carry over privacy concerns (pretty important for enterprise software). My gut tells me they should have released this as a completely separate entity to avoid fragmentation (I suppose this would also be the default positioning argument).

As an outsider it's also an interesting case of make vs. buy (MS-Yammer vs. Workplace).

Re: Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses

#229

Post by visakanv »

crdoconnor wrote: post #220
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate that slack by default mutes all conversations after like 6 pm. Creating an opt-in model sets a much better expectation.

I didn't really appreciate that feature when I realized that it assumed that I was in San Francisco and was muting conversations at 6PM pacific.

Wow, did Slack just assume your timezone?

Re: Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses

#230

Post by matwood »

eropple wrote: post #195
res0nat0r wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that isn't at all Slacks fault, it is your company culture and people.

I don't agree with that at all. I am a consultant. I see lots of companies. I see lots of companies jumping on the "plug our employees 24/7 into everything" bandwagon. Slack has a moral obligation--we all have the moral obligation--to not be the stooge of bad actors just as it works to improve the productivity of good ones. If Slack took this seriously, it would do significantly more to protect its users from toxic b…

> For example: it is possible to ignore people's do-not-disturb settings (added relatively recently, after a long period of asking) to force their phone to blow up at four in the morning.

How is this any different than someone calling you at 4am? Or sending a bunch of emails? This has nothing to do with Slack and everything to do with a bad company.

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