{"id":768,"date":"2016-10-10T22:50:15","date_gmt":"2016-10-10T22:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/workplace-by-facebook-opens-to-sell-enterprise-social-networking-to-the-masses.html"},"modified":"2016-10-10T22:50:15","modified_gmt":"2016-10-10T22:50:15","slug":"workplace-by-facebook-opens-to-sell-enterprise-social-networking-to-the-masses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/workplace-by-facebook-opens-to-sell-enterprise-social-networking-to-the-masses.html","title":{"rendered":"Workplace by Facebook opens to sell enterprise social networking to the masses"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

After\u00a020\u00a0months<\/a> in a closed beta under the working title Facebook at Work<\/a>, (as we predicted it would the other week<\/a>)\u00a0today Facebook is finally bringing\u00a0its enterprise-focused messaging and social networking service to\u00a0market under a new name,\u00a0Workplace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only armed\u00a0with a new brand: Workplace is launching with a new kind of pricing model\u00a0based on\u00a0Facebook-style monthly active user metrics; and some pretty big ambitions after picking up 1,000 organizations as customers while still in its free, pilot mode (up from 100 a year ago).<\/p>\n

\"08_workplace_live_android\"Workplace \u2014 which is launching as a desktop and mobile app with\u00a0News Feed, Groups both for your own company and with others, Chat direct messaging, Live video, Reactions, translation features, and video and audio calling \u2014\u00a0is now opening up to anyone\u00a0to use, and the operative word here is \u201canyone\u201d.<\/p>\n

To really gain critical mass for the product and help it stand out from others in the market, Facebook\u00a0is courting not just\u00a0companies\u2019 white-collar, desk-dwelling\u00a0\u201cknowledge workers\u201d who\u00a0typically buy and use enterprise messaging software.<\/p>\n

It also wants to bring on the\u00a0much wider global wedge of employees who serve customers, maintain machines or\u00a0otherwise roam as\u00a0part of their jobs \u2014 people who may already be using Facebook in their non-working life, but who have rarely been co-opted into an organization\u2019s wider digital collaboration efforts in the past.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u00a0want to build enterprise software the\u00a0Facebook way\u2019<\/h2>\n

Workplace is opening for business long\u00a0after a number of competing services have made their mark and picked up significant traction \u2014 popular rival software in the area of enterprise communication and messaging includes the likes of Slack<\/a>, Yammer<\/a> (now part of\u00a0Microsoft), Chatter<\/a> from Salesforce, Hipchat<\/a> and Jive<\/a>, among many others.<\/p>\n

There are even a range of lesser-known\u00a0business messaging apps built specifically for \u201cnon-desk\u201d workers, including Zinc<\/a> (originally called Cotap<\/a>), Beekeeper<\/a> and more.<\/p>\n

Why the delay? \u201cWe had to build this\u00a0totally separate from Facebook, and we\u00a0had to test and get all the possible certifications to be a Saas\u00a0vendor,\u201d Julien Codorniou, director of Workplace, explained\u00a0in an interview in London, where the development of the product was based. Those developments are still happening. He\u00a0told me that as of last week Workplace\u00a0joined the US\/EU Privacy Shield. <\/span><\/p>\n

The other reason has to do with the kinds of companies and non-traditional SaaS buyers it was targeting. \u201cWe<\/span>\u00a0wanted to see how it would work\u00a0in very conservative industries and government\u00a0agencies,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had to test the product in every possible geography\u00a0and industry, especially the most conservative ones. We feel we are ready for primetime now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"07_workplace_group_desktop\"<\/p>\n

Workplace\u00a0may not be first to the market, but it\u2019s hoping to woo people with a\u00a0few twists.<\/p>\n

One of these\u00a0comes in the form of pricing. Enterprise software companies typically follow a few standard business models: they include charging per-seat, based on a certain number of users at your company; in larger tiers based on the same principle of user numbers; based on feature sets; and under a freemium model, where you get a small number of basics for a small group, with the understanding that you soon be ramping up to more features in the paid tiers.<\/p>\n

Facebook has thrown most\u00a0of this out of the window and is opting instead to take a page from its own book of metrics.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s going to\u00a0offer everyone the same features, and\u00a0charge for Workplace\u00a0by monthly active users \u2014 defined in this case as opening up and using Workplace at least once in the month.\u00a0Facebook will charge $3 per user per month for the first 1,000 users; $2 for the next 1,001-10,000; and $1 for any MAUs\u00a0above that.<\/p>\n

(As a pricing point of comparison, Slack charges<\/a> $8 and $15 per active user per month for\u00a0two bands of features, with the price going down if you pay annually, and it has yet to launch its enterprise tier for extra-large organizations.)<\/p>\n

The reason for the pricing by MAUs, and at these competitive prices, was made for a couple of reasons. For starters, it means that what\u00a0is being bought becomes more transparent to the\u00a0customer.<\/p>\n

But also:\u00a0Facebook then holds itself more\u00a0accountable for the service. You pay only for what you are actually using, and Facebook essentially only gets paid\u00a0for how engaging it\u2019s managed to make the\u00a0service, much like ads that run on the platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to build enterprise software the Facebook way,\u201d said Codorniou.<\/p>\n

Another interesting aspect of the\u00a0pricing concerns the tiers of numbers Facebook is throwing around. The company would not give us a total number of MAUs for\u00a0Workplace as of today. But it is\u00a0clear that the aim is to target very large companies and other organizations\u00a0with this product.<\/p>\n

Some of the early customers that Facebook has signed up have included 36,000 employees<\/a> at\u00a0the carrier Telenor, and 100,000 employees <\/a>at the Royal Bank of Scotland, and today Facebook\u2019s announcing more such as\u00a0Danone (100,000 employees), Starbucks (238,000 employees) and Booking.com<\/a>\u00a0(13,000).<\/p>\n

It also has organizations like the Royal National Institute for the Blind,\u00a0Oxfam, and the Government Technology Agency of Singapore.<\/p>\n

While Facebook\u00a0is charging for Workplace, making tons of money from it doesn\u2019t appear to be its actual goal \u2014 not at first, at least. The goal, Codorniou said, is to gain some critical mass for the product.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to grow workplace like Instagram and Messenger,\u201d he said. \u201cBefore you even think about monetization, we\u00a0want to spend the first years growing it. We are obsessed with growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another\u00a0way that Facebook might just succeed with at least getting people to try out Workplace, if not switch over to using it permanently, is based on the fact that works just like Facebook itself.<\/p>\n

With the main consumer service now pushing past 1.7 billion monthly active users<\/a>, it\u2019s likely that a good portion of a company\u2019s employees will either already know the service, if not already use it.<\/p>\n

This will mean people will be instantly familiar with how the product looks and works, which in the closed beta\u00a0has translated into a very high amount of engagement with the product. Among the 1,000 companies and other organizations that have been using Workplace in its closed beta, there have been no fewer than 100,000 user groups already created.<\/p>\n

\u2018Usage is more important than a Workday integration\u2019<\/h2>\n

As we have written about Facebook at Work in the past<\/a>, much\u00a0of Workplace will essentially look just like the Facebook you already know and probably use today.<\/p>\n

There is\u00a0a News Feed. There are Groups that you can build within your own company and with colleagues at other organizations that you work with regularly. There is a Messenger equivalent that Facebook refers to as \u201cChat\u201d.<\/p>\n

There is Live video as well as group video and audio calling. You can comment on posts with multi-emotional\u00a0Reactions and there are automatic translation features.<\/p>\n

There are also some partnerships\u00a0from day one that speak to the aim of working with big enterprises that may already be using other services. They include the likes of Okta, OneLogin and Ping for log-ins and identity services, Box for storage, and integrators like\u00a0Deloitte and Sada Systems.<\/p>\n

But generally speaking, there isn\u2019t a long list of integrations that will work with Workplace from the start, a la Slack, which lets you bring in work and data from hundreds of other apps with short-cut slash-commands.<\/p>\n

Codorniou said that this was intentional.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to talk about an easy to use product and democratic pricing with customers,\u201d he said. \u201cW<\/span>hen I talked to the CEO\u00a0of Danone, whose 100,000 employees include many people without computers and\u00a0desks, usage and engagement were\u00a0more important than whether Workplace integrated with Workday or Quip.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

(Interesting sidenote to this: for now, Cordorniou told me\u00a0that Facebook requires all potential sales partners and\u00a0integrators to actually sign up for Workplace and use it before they are allowed to work on it. \u201cI don\u2019t see how you can sell it without using it first,\u201d he said.)<\/span><\/p>\n

From what I understand, it\u2019s likely that Slack-style integrations, along with other bells and whistles like bots and the multitude of other features that have invaded Messenger, are likely to come down the line very soon, with the first\u00a0of them making an appearance at Facebook\u2019s F8 conference this coming spring.<\/span><\/p>\n

For now, the message to the market may be\u00a0big enough: Facebook has become a de facto<\/em> platform for billions of consumers globally to communicate with each other in the digital world, and now it is aggressively moving\u00a0to be\u00a0the same in the working world.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/GtJL2gOMs3c\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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