24 Nov Facebook at Work is coming. Is it right for your business?
Yesterday Facebook all but confirmed the existence of the long-rumored “Facebook at Work”, a program to allow people to, well, use Facebook for work. The initiative, currently being tested in London, is meant to help business teams take advantage of Facebook’s newsfeed, groups and messaging to better communicate and share information. Facebook will also build features that are especially useful for business, like document sharing.
In the past several years, many large businesses teams have turned to services like Jive and Yammer to better share information internally. Plus, many workers are using LinkedIn to chronicle their accomplishments and career paths. Facebook at Work looks to be an interesting combination of these two types of platforms.
It’s unclear at this point whether Facebook will offer the service for free or charge businesses, but what is known is that network profiles will be entirely separate from the existing Facebook site. That makes sense, given that many people are still uncomfortable using their Facebook profiles for businesses purposes.
So how do you know if it’s right for your team? Social media has played an important role in changing the way people at businesses of all sizes communicate at work. Employees expect more and faster access to information. But that doesn’t mean a Facebook for work is the answer for everyone. Early descriptions of Facebook at Work suggest it might be more beneficial for large enterprise teams than for small businesses. Too, small businesses are often better off focusing limited social media resources on engaging their customers and community.
Stay tuned for more details on Facebook at Work. We’ll share updates as we find out more about the features and benefits that it will have on internal communications for business teams.