From my inbox
by Volker Weber
About six months ago we started using Workplace by Facebook and I can tell you that user feedback is great, never seen such a high level of adoption with any other collaboration platform (yes, from QuickPlace to Commections and Yammer)
Workplace by Facebook puts an end to all those discussions about what you need to do to make your employees share ideas and communicate more directly. Give them a tool they use every single day and put it in a work context. They don't need to be told how to use it because they already know. There are still lots of ways to shoot yourself in the foot repeatedly by putting in restrictions left and right.
Facebook is on to something. There are quite a few people across the industry who would like to be on that team.
Their pricing structure is excellent. $3 a month for the first 1000 active users, $2 for the next 9000. $1 for each additional. The keyword is active: you don't pay for every person in your directory, but only for those who use it.
Comments
Who's the 'we' in the statement ?
My experience in WorkPlace is 'useless'.
I agree on 'smart pricing model' but I'd really like to see/hear something on value it helped to create and organize.
"Share ideas and communicate more directly" is maybe 10% of what we do with an Enterprise Collaboration Platform. We actually spend a lot of time working on activities, ideation, files and wikis. All of that is braided into one activity stream (which can be controlled precisely by each user). None of that is possible with Facebook Workplace.
Introducing an Enterprise Social Networking solution/platform is a transformation project because people DON'T KNOW how to use it. You have to break down cultural barriers and information silos, get used to the idea of sharing instead of sending ... and many more.
The reaction appears similar to the iPhone, which was quickly dismissed as a consumer toy.
@Otto Foerg, I really like that statement ... "get used to the idea of sharing instead of sending...". That's what I miss when using utterly useless tools like Confluence for collaborating as it is just a kind of producing RTFMs than working/ living places.
At least in the company I work for.
Longer answer.
Danielle, I never disclose anything about the who. That is why people send me stuff. They explain who they are, what they do, but I keep that information to myself. If you told me in private where you are investing in messaging, I would be at liberty to tell the rest of the world. This particular company has a four digit number of employees on the platform.
As far as the value created is concerned: Facebook runs on that platform (eat your own dogfood) and seems to be doing well. IBM is running on their platform and seems to be doing not so well. Does that mean one platform is better than the other? Of course not. It means, that it isn't easy. IBM does not publish all the research they are doing on this matter, but the correlation between using an ESN and measurable success is not a given. Some parts of the organization thrives, others don't.
But that is not the point. This company tells me, they are seeing a significantly better feedback from their users. And it is not my only data point. There have been more observations like this. The only reasonable explanation is that people feel right at home, because they know how to use this platform.
Thomas, Reaktion eines Kollegen, der plötzlich ein ESN nutzen soll: https://twitter.com/briegleb/status/822152070295851008
Und der scheut sich nicht, etwas aufzuschreiben. Weil das sein Beruf ist.
I agree, using a UI people are already familiar with is a huge plus when it comes to adoption. Turning that into business results however, is a totally different story.
At the end of the day, it's all about how good you are at applying the capabilities you're familiar with to your actual use cases in order to get your job done.
Facebook and IBM have different business models. Last time i checked Facebook made its money from selling ads (and probably data, but i don't that...).
The nice thing about the future is: Nobody has ever been there, so we'll see how this turns out. I personally believe, that it's not a good idea to name your product "Workplace", but the people in Menlo Park are probably too young to know and care about. ;-)
Nuja, das Stement des plötzlich ESN zu nutzen habenden Kollegen kann man wirklich für alles verwenden. Da fehlen noch ein paar Argumente.
Erik, ich passe immer auf, dass ich nicht workplace.ibm.com tippe. :-)
Otto, ich denk mir das nicht aus. Mit sowas hat vbr kein Problem:
Enterprise-Messaging
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@Felix: Isn't there a connection between sharing ideas and ideation? ;-)
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I've been using several collaboration platforms over the years and have learned that people (users) to a large part adjust to what they like. I've seen people praise Connections over the moon, when I was looking forward to the moment I don't have to use this pos anymore (that was a few years ago). Some of these people then went on to use SharePoint, and were pleasantly surprised that they could find their data again rather easily and did not have to worry about their Word files being stored properly (that was a real statement of a manager). And SharePoint certainly is not the masterpiece, Microsoft (and many consultants) would like it to be.
I got to know IBM as a company that tells their clients what's good for them (for the most part), whereas Facebook (again, for the most part) grew out of observing their customers and adding and adjusting the products where they see a demand. Two very different perspectives, and from my experience with IBM I'd go with FB any time (the question who to trust more with my data is yet another unanswered question).
