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CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

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Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#51

Post by pdpi »

keanzu wrote: post #30
pdpi wrote: post #9

If I read it right and they had around 1k users after 3 years of trialling Workplace, I think it’s less a case of “ending the trial” as it is “pulling the cord on life support”. The article distinctly makes it sound as if they only trialled because they were offered a generous free usage period, without a clear desire to actually integrate it into their daily routine. The timeline suggests that they were onboarded in…

They fail to mention how many potential users there were and whether this was high or low take up. "The acronym CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory, which in 2016 had 2,500 scientific, technical, and administrative staff members, and hosted about 12,000 users." Is it 1000 out of 2500 or 1000 out of 14500 or am I using an invalid source and the actual staff count is completely different?

FB’s target was almost certainly the whole enchilada, so it’s penetration of 1000 out of 14500.

Even if you call it 1000 out of 2500, that’s 40% adoption over three years, for a tool that wants to be the centrepiece of your collaboration architecture.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#52

Post by someonehere »

Fun fact. This tool was being developed internally at FB about ten years ago. They really couldn’t figure it out back then and it sounds like they can’t figure it out today. Internally before it was Workplace it was a decent tool that integrated with the public facing site. Unsure of how Workplace works today.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#53

Post by syshum »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #21

They only had 150 active users (despite 1000 signups), so choosing not to pay for the offering makes sense. I have the utmost respect for CERN as an institution — I want to make that clear. What I don’t love, however, is this trend that seems to be using a PR offensive of “price shaming” whenever contract or license terms change. I understand CERN is publicly funded and that it doesn’t have an unlimited budget. But I…

Personally I love it

Centralization of the web is a huge problem, More and more we see companies paying 3rd party services (like Facebook, MS, and Google) to run communications infrastructure instead of running your own infrastructure based on Open Source software. I find that to be a TERRIBLE trend.

If price shamming is a way to open peoples eyes to go back to running their own serivces then I am all for it

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#54

Post by alamortsubite »

martijn_himself wrote: post #42

I don't know Workplace but how is this newsworthy and of interest to anyone outside of CERN? The article sounds quite spiteful, and why, if 'Many people preferred not to use a tool from a company that they did not trust in terms of data privacy' would you use it in the first place? Also, how can you blame a commercial company for charging for a tool?

> why ... would you use it in the first place?

People's trust in FB has eroded greatly over the last three years. That may be all there is to it.

In addition, however, the post clearly says it was a trial. The people who pushed for it were not necessarily the ones who had to eat the dog food.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#55

Post by ahartmetz »

bipson wrote: post #16
skinnyasianboi wrote: post #7

Great move to go with open source solutions like Mattermost and Discourse.

This has tradition at CERN. I wonder why they even considered Facebook's offering, but I guess they do not dismiss proprietary solutions as well. Whatever works? Often enough they end up writing their own tools, if nothing fitting is available, and this might end up in the public domain (since AFAIK everything at CERN is basically paid for by the public, i.e. various member states, EU etc.).

CERN IT administration is sometimes pretty idiotic. When I was still in physics, they replaced the well-loved homegrown Hypernews system with Microsoft something, a move welcomed by no one.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#57

Post by sebow »

Why is CERN of all places using facebook or doing business at any level with facebook?

This is not some "anti-americanism" or anything. Facebook is a shit corporation, and CERN of all places should have nothing to do with it, besides maybe a public verified page to announce things and similar activities.

As an european and as an EU citizen, this is disgraceful.I don't think people actually realize what (should at least) kind of resources and talent CERN has. They should have their own mediums of communication and team management, etc.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#58

Post by pbalau »

mstade wrote: post #47
montyhallpy wrote: post #2

My company too has bought into this Facebook Workplace hype. The feedback from users is mixed. Some people like it. Most find it clumsy and cluttered. The notification system is totally useless and spammy. Almost every little update by anyone in your org is a notification. I see 100+ notifications everytime I log in. I don't know what value it brings or what problem it solves that is not already solved by email / dis…

We use workplace too and this mirrors my experience precisely, especially the bit about notifications. It seems you can't control it either, you can turn off individual workspaces or whatever they call them, but new ones are added by default it seems so it's a cat and mouse game. Given it's so noisy, and full of the same dark patterns as regular Facebook, it's all but useless in sending out comms across the wider org…

> We use workplace too and this mirrors my experience precisely, especially the bit about notifications.

I have a solution for you: https://imgur.com/a/QnIsBUw Even better, if you go to https://my.workplace.com/groups/ you will see a list with all groups you are part of with options, for each group, to control the notifications, follow settings and leave the group. On the same page there is a button to bulk manage groups.

Both my personal fb feed and the workplace feeds and notifications (both when I used to work for fb and now at the current startup), are fairly clean, with only things I care about. Yours is noisy because you let it be noisy.

At fb, our team had a public group for support requests, a main internal group for team wide comms (release notes for each service we provided, on-call reports, welcome messages for new peeps, social stuff) and a number of groups for each individual team, or service, or even inter team projects. The noise on my feed was minimal.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#59

Post by Cederfjard »

pdpi wrote: post #51
keanzu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They fail to mention how many potential users there were and whether this was high or low take up. "The acronym CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory, which in 2016 had 2,500 scientific, technical, and administrative staff members, and hosted about 12,000 users." Is it 1000 out of 2500 or 1000 out of 14500 or am I using an invalid source and the actual staff count is completely different?

FB’s target was almost certainly the whole enchilada, so it’s penetration of 1000 out of 14500. Even if you call it 1000 out of 2500, that’s 40% adoption over three years, for a tool that wants to be the centrepiece of your collaboration architecture.

Even worse, the current top comment (clarified further by one of its children) is saying that they only had 150 active users per week.

Re: CERN Ends Trial of Facebook Workplace

#60

Post by donalhunt »

> Losing control of our data was unacceptable

This is the biggest risk to companies as they evolve their use of products and manage costs.

We found to our dismay that Dropbox do something similar if you decide to migrate off their platform (accounts get downgraded to the free plan and the company loses all control over the data in the account).

Companies are not doing enough to highlight these gaps / gotchas when the decision to utilise the platform are made.

(only a little bitter having had to deal with the fallout of these decisions)

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