Facebook Is Looking for Likes for Its New Work-Chat Service
October 10 2016 - 05:59AM
Dow Jones News
By Deepa Seetharaman
Facebook Inc. is used by a quarter of the world's population to
keep tabs on friends every month. Now, the 12-year-old social
network is seeking similar dominance in the corporate world.
On Monday, Facebook is planning the commercial launch of
Facebook at Work, a tool for companies that allows workers to chat
and collaborate with each other. The company, which has been
testing the tool for nearly two years, is expected to disclose new
details, including plans to begin charging companies a monthly fee
for every user.
Facebook faces dozens of rivals in the business-messaging market
eager to displace email as a primary work communication tool,
including Slack Technologies Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s Yammer,
offered through Office 365, and Jive from Jive Software of Palo
Alto, Calif.
Even though it is a newcomer, Facebook could be a serious threat
to incumbents because so many workers already use its website and
mobile app in their personal lives.
"Everyone knows Facebook, so adoption will be really fast," said
Christine Moorman, a professor at the Fuqua School of Business at
Duke University.
That was the case for telecommunications giant Telenor ASA,
which rolled out Facebook's software to its 35,000 employees
world-wide in March. Telenor is among the companies that have been
testing Facebook's program.
Since January 2015, when Facebook at Work launched as a pilot
project, hundreds of companies, including the Royal Bank of
Scotland, have been testing the service, which is available on
desktop and as a mobile app. Facebook has said that 60,000
companies applied to test the tool.
The enterprise service is modeled after Facebook's internal
corporate network. Like the ubiquitous social product, it opens to
a news feed with posts ranked based on an algorithm that takes into
account a user's previous activity on the corporate account. Users
can chat in groups or privately and post and watch live videos as
well as share documents.
But Facebook at Work has enterprise-grade security and
administration tools and a more sober gray color palette than the
company's signature blue, according to Facebook documents
describing the product. There aren't any ads.
Customers aren't required to have a personal Facebook account to
use Facebook at Work and employers can't use the tool to see what
employees do on their personal accounts. Companies get data on
their employees' activity, including how many messages and posts
they send.
Still, some customers may worry that encouraging employees to
use Facebook might make them less productive, Ms. Moorman said.
"They'll probably have to reassure their customers that there will
be something that keeps people from just dealing with their
personal stuff at work," she added.
Companies have been slow to adopt social media tools for their
employees because workers need to be trained to use new software.
Enterprise social networks tend to be dominated by a small group of
superusers, but about half the employees don't use it at all,
according to some consultants.
Facebook hasn't charged for the service during the pilot phase,
but now plans to levy a fee for every employee who uses Facebook at
Work at least once a month. This is the first time Facebook has
charged a fee for its services. The bulk of its revenue comes from
showing ads in users' news feeds.
Facebook declined to say how much it will charge. Slack offers a
free version of its messaging service alongside two beefed-up
packages that respectively cost $6.67 and $12.50 per monthly
user.
Monday's launch is scheduled to be announced by Nicola
Mendelsohn, Facebook's vice president of Europe, the Middle East
and Africa, as well as other company officials. The Facebook at
Work team is based in London.
Write to Deepa Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 10, 2016 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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