“Facebook for Work” and Information Cascades
Across the nation, employees in offices are tempted to use Facebook at their desks, but are stopped by their superiors. Now there is a way for employees to have all the benefits of Facebook while increasing productivity in the work space. Facebook has created “Facebook for Work”, an extension of the social media giant created to get more adult users in the daytime and provide a resource to allow employees to share work by means of collaborating on documents, sharing files, and chatting. Think of it as Facebook’s take on Google Docs. There are already some smaller companies, like Yammer and Slack, that offer some of the same features, but none of these services have the same size of a company behind them as Facebook for Work.
The question that now arises is that even though Facebook has developed this software, will they be able to push it into professional environments. When people think social media in business, they think about LinkedIn. Facebook is more casual. Where do college students post their drunk pictures, Facebook or LinkedIn? Supposedly the business oriented version will be separate but function with Facebook.
I think an information cascade would be required to get this used. In the same way that people started using Facebook over other social media sites by direct benefit based information cascades, where people join a service because their friends use it and it is a benefit for them to be a part of the group, Facebook for Work will probably beat out other services. However, at the same time as the information cascade for Facebook for Work, there needs to be a information cascade to re brand Facebook as less casual and more formal.
Would this be possible? Absolutely, Facebook has tons of money in advertising, they can make their product look like whatever they want, and with 71% of people already on Facebook, it shouldn’t be hard to find a user base.
Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2848404/report-facebook-for-work-to-take-on-yammer-and-slack.html