Facebook may control the social graph of 1.3 billion people, but now it has ambitions to stretch deeper into the workplace, according to the Financial Times’ report on plans for “Facebook at Work”.
This isn’t about getting around corporate firewalls to ensure you can see which Frozen character your friends are, though. It’s a proper move to compete with services from Google Drive and LinkedIn to Slack, and become a serious working tool.
“The Silicon Valley company is developing a new product designed to allow users to chat with colleagues, connect with professional contacts and collaborate over documents,” claimed the FT.
“The new site will look very much like Facebook – with a newsfeed and groups – but will allow users to keep their personal profile with its holiday photos, political rants and silly videos separate from their work identity.”
It might be a sensible move for Facebook, but how will workers (and bosses) feel about their data being shared and stored on the social network? Workplace collaboration in the cloud isn’t an alien concept for many businesses now, but I wonder how Facebook providing this will be received.
What do you think? The comments section is open for your thoughts.
Also on the technology radar today:
Spotify and Uber team up for in-car music
Uber is holding a press call with a “special partner guest” later today, but their identity is out: streaming music service Spotify. You’ll apparently be able to control the music played in your Uber car from your smartphone, with the tunes delivered from Spotify to the driver’s handset.
Facebook to crack down on ‘overly promotional’ page posts
If you’ve liked Facebook pages that tend to pump out contests or “please buy our thing” posts, expect to see them less in your feed from January. “Pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time,” explains the social network.
