back to article Facebook, working on Facebook at Work, works on Facebook. At Work

Facebook's decision to hire engineers in London is apparently related to plans to build a biz-friendly platform that will compete with such products as LinkedIn, Microsoft Office and Google's Drive. But, until "Facebook At Work" is ready, Facebookers will still be using ordinary Facebook at work. According to an FT scoop, …

  1. JassMan
    Trollface

    There is intelligence in corporations after all.

    > Up until now, Facebook has been largely shunned by the corporate world, given its propensity for time-wasting during office hours. The site is banned on many company networks.

    AND SO IT SHOULD BE.

    I note also that the author made the usual mistake of saying "Free content" as opposed to the more descriptive "Content free"

    1. Isendel Steel

      Re: There is intelligence in corporations after all.

      Got there before me re: content

      Intelligence - possibly more along the lines it hits productivity / spaffing corporate details all over the place.

    2. Tom 38

      Re: There is intelligence in corporations after all.

      The most amusing thing after our facebook ban was implemented was the reasons that people came up with why they required facebook access at work - "Sure, the wage-slaves mustn't have access to facebook, but I am very important and need to check every 30 minutes where I am meeting Annabelle for drinks", these requests seemed to say.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: There is intelligence in corporations after all.

        If they are not smart enough to evade a network block, they are not smart enough to be employed.

        A non-techy could throw a beers in the correct direction and have it solved for them, if they have any interpersonal skills.

        1. Tom 38

          Re: There is intelligence in corporations after all.

          On one hand, it's easy to technically get around such a ban. On the other hand, it is so much easier to sack someone if they use company resources to access a website that the company has said they are not allowed to access.

          Hence the amusing begging emails to be put on to the "social networks allowed" ACL.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: There is intelligence in corporations after all.

            Oh such a complex solution to a very simple problem.

            They simply use their own mobile phone. Job done.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: There is intelligence in corporations after all.

              Which is precisely why Facebook was unblocked again where I work - while it was blocked everyone was accessing it on their mobile phones, which is all very good but you have no idea how much productivity is being lost to it and whether someone is sending a text or updating a status (although obviously the work Nazis will say they shouldn't be stopping to send a text either), having unblocked it at least the management can keep an eye on how much productivity is being lost to "Facebook time" and people spoken to if it gets a bit much. The drive to ban Facebook at work is driven by the idea that there's always something else someone could be doing that's more productive than Facebook, and as anyone who's ever worked anywhere knows that's largely bollocks, and if you are one of the few who's job consumes every second of every work day stop wanting to ban everyone else's 2 minutes of light of light relief to update a status or post a comment just because your work life is shit.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Facebook at Work...

    I can see it now :

    Relationship status : FIRED !

  3. ratfox
    WTF?

    Microsoft Office is a social-network-for-suits now??

    I wouldn't know. I haven't used it since 2005.

    1. IT Hack

      Re: Microsoft Office is a social-network-for-suits now??

      @ Ratfox

      The killer app here is being able to downvote your bosses insane business proposals anonymously.

      Who am I kidding?

  4. Camilla Smythe

    No Doubt..

    You will have to link your 'Facebook Account' to your 'Facebook At Work' account and be invited to upload all the contact details from your address book so your 'friends' will be invited to join as well and you will be automatically 'friended' with hrdepartment@yourcompany.com and yourboss@yourcompany.com along with possiblesuppliers@someothercompanies.com

  5. Christoph

    Please add all of your company's internal data so we can sell it to our advertisers.

  6. Khaptain Silver badge

    Paradoxical Satire

    It's a very paradoxical and satirical idea that manages to introduce "Facebook" and "Work" into the same project.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: Paradoxical Satire

      It's also a very scary concept.

    2. Robert Helpmann??
      Childcatcher

      Re: Paradoxical Satire

      On the other hand, I know of more than one organization that have opened their respective firewalls to FB and similar time wasting social media sites in order to monitor their employees' posts. Despite the prominent banner being displayed before logging in, there are many users who don't realize they are essentially granting access to their various accounts to the boss.

  7. JeffTravis

    Because

    Yammer is such a resounding success........

  8. John P

    Facebook vs Yammer is a bit of a tenuous link, but how is this going to compete with Google Drive? Surely it's a competitor for Google+, shouldn't be too hard to lure away the 6 Google+ users..

  9. Otto is a bear.

    A crowded market

    This is a bit of a late play, Facebook type capabilities have been around for awhile now. Quite a few social networking products out there besides yammer. Business collaboration products have been around even longer, incorporated with portal and documentation products. It will be interesting to see what Facebook think they can do that hasn't already been done.

    It is always possible they think that because we are Facebook everyone will want us. They will need a very pursuasive market message to get any interest.

  10. VinceH

    "Up until now, Facebook has been largely shunned by the corporate world, given its propensity for time-wasting during office hours. The site is banned on many company networks."

    ...which means that during those hours, Facebook isn't seeing enough eyeballs on its customers' adverts, so decided it was now time to address this.

  11. ukgnome

    Actually I am for F.A.W.

    there are not enough cat pictures at my firm.

  12. b0hem1us
    Paris Hilton

    There is very little inteligence in corporations...

    The big corporations are not intelligent at all 'cause at my mama's work (one of the big pharma corporations) everyone got a tablet with a plan and used that instead. Furthermore, now they are jumping the BYOD band wagon. This actually smells of dementia more than anything else, block sht A on network 1 so resources don't waste time and then allow them bring their own devices so can waste even more time playing Clash of Clans instead of just chatting on Facebook. See the ingenuity in that?

  13. zen1

    Days like this

    I truly do love my next gen firewalls and their ability to filter fb and their crap. I get almost 200 emails a day requesting access to fb, twitter, etc., and my usual reply is: Ask your supervisor, manager or VP. If they say yes (which nobody has yet) then I'll consider opening it. However, you must realize that just because you have access to these sites at home doesn't mean you're going to be able to get access to them in the office. Especially, when their sole purpose in life is to monitor your every move, on whatever computer you're on, and glean browsing history/intel from that. Occasionally someone gets pissy with me and I simply remind them that as much as I wish otherwise, the office isn't a democracy. Computer usage policies have been created to protect the company from losing sensitive data AND to keep people from generating a hostile work environment, by watching porn or something else that others might find objectionable.

    I further find it quite humorous when people hoping to get by the policies I'm ordered to enforce, by bringing in their own devices, get completely honked off because their only option is to use Citrix. The tantrums people have thrown in my office have been quite epic. But, (and much to my amusement) my hands are tied.

    As for FB for work, I'm really puzzled as to what kind of applications will be available to users. Last I checked, farmville & words for friends don't have any business equivalents, so I'm interested in seeing what kind of bullshit the zuck-head uses to justify this new product offering.

  14. Christian Berger

    Well... they've gotta make money

    Even the workplace hierarchy data can fetch lots of money, after all recruiters have lots of money.

    I'm sure even other people would pay quite a lot for access to that data, after all when you have a problem with your ISP, calling a technical staff person and telling him you were given his number from $boss_two_layers_above can help.

    Plus this puts Facebook in a position where they know even better what a company is doing, probably even better than the company itself.

  15. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Yeah this is amusing

    Yeah, this is honestly amusing. I see exactly zero business use for Facebook. (And I don't use it so I'm not going to be one of them rushing in because Facebook is blocked.) As zen1 alludes to, I can't think of a single application Facebook has that would be useful for business. And there are already services like LinkedIn that are FOR business-type use. I suppose I could be wrong, but I think if Facebook thinks they can horn in on this market that they are sorely mistaken.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Facebook privacy?????

    Facebook is to privacy as the KKK is to race relations...

    All Zuck wants to do, is connect everyone up and mine the information from all the "likes" and sell it.....

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