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Facebook's Slack Rival Is Coming Next Month and Will Charge Per Employee (businessinsider.com)

Posted by msmash on from the photocopier-machine dept.

Facebook will be launching a business communication service dubbed Facebook at Work next month. The service will be very familiar to Slack, a popular communications app. BusinessInsider reports: The enterprise messaging platform, which is called Facebook at Work, has been in closed beta since last January. Business Insider reported in May that Facebook at Work would be made commercially available by the end of this summer or in the fall. Previous reports said Facebook planned to only charge for premium features, like integrations with third-party apps. But one company testing the service that Business Insider talked to in May said that companies would pay a per-user, per-month fee. They had been quoted a cost between $1 to $5 a user by Facebook.

63 comments

  1. Trade secrets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Surely, the businesses of the world would love to share their trade secrets with Zuckerberg et al.

    1. Re:Trade secrets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      All the companies I work with want their software for nothing and their IT development for free.

      So good luck charging for it!

  2. No Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Team already uses Slack -- not sure why anyone that's using something that already works well would switch. Also, I should mention that I don't have a facebook account, so would this mean I'd have to create one if, say, some team I join happens to use that crap? Boo.

    1. Re:No Thanks by omnichad · · Score: 1

      I should mention that I don't have a facebook account, so would this mean I'd have to create one if, say, some team I join happens to use that crap?

      It's a separate account anyway. Facebook users have to create a new account too. Just like Slack, for that matter. I really doubt you'd be required to create a personal account to use it.

    2. Re:No Thanks by NotAPK · · Score: 2

      Just never ever ever make a cross post or link them in any way, or the separation you've created is lost forever...oh, and don't let any of your colleagues or friends link them either.... yeah, good luck with that....

    3. Re:No Thanks by omnichad · · Score: 1

      The screenshots make it seem just like the Google multi-account sign-in. They remain completely separate other than the simultaneous authentication being possible in the browser (and the cookies to back it up). Not sure what you're talking about regarding "linking."

    4. Re:No Thanks by segoy · · Score: 1

      Until Slack releases its enterprise offering, there'll be some companies needing the control that FB@work will give them. I've been using FB@work for a few weeks now, and it seems to be a great competitor to Yammer, but not to Slack.

    5. Re:No Thanks by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      Not sure what you're talking about regarding "linking."

      Linking would be my signing my Gmail.com address with my Hotmail.com account
      (I forwarded my Hotmail.com account long ago to Gmail, and the save). /. is an old account and a hotmail.com address.
      Signature would also be a link, it's been well used.

    6. Re:No Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And by "completely separate" you mean that if sufficient information matches, it's detectably obviously the same person.

  3. Facebook at work by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Facebook at work....you know, sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    1. Re: Facebook at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL

    2. Re:Facebook at work by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Killer feature #1 most businesses want - blocking Facebook.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    3. Re:Facebook at work by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, they don't. Either make a joke, or don't. You don't get credit for meta-humour.

      Apparently I do, Mr Zuckerberg.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    4. Re:Facebook at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I never meta humor I didn't like.

      Except maybe phlegm. The little snot.

    5. Re:Facebook at work by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      Killer feature #1 most businesses want - blocking Facebook.

      That's a huge chunk of a Hosts file.

    6. Re:Facebook at work by kuzb · · Score: 1

      If a business wants to block facebook they don't need a facebook app. They need a competent admin.

      --
      BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
    7. Re:Facebook at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You DO get credit, you DO! (at least to me)
      Helluva fine sentence :)

      ** and by the way, if FB is now SOOoo accepted in the workplace that's it's now becoming integrated with business communication, that's pretty hellish reality- and reminds me how phones, texts, and notifications are becoming equally acceptable while driving. So much that's we now consider self-driving cars an expected normalcy.

  4. Or.. by codeButcher · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or, use e-mail?

    --
    Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
    1. Re:Or.. by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

      But how can you compete for who has the most friends and likes with e-mail?

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    2. Re:Or.. by war4peace · · Score: 1

      My money's on XMPP protocol.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    3. Re:Or.. by NotAPK · · Score: 1

      I find REPLY-ALL to the list reminds everyone that I exists, especially when the mail is to the department mailing list!

    4. Re:Or.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you ever touched Slack? In theory, you could do almost anything with email, but email doesn't handle instant messages or file sharing or group chats or hooks to repository updates or ....

    5. Re:Or.. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      A system which has shown itself over and over again to fail miserably in large group collaboration.

      No thanks. I personally think the likes of Yammer and such are steaming piles of horse manure, yet in many cases they serve their purpose better than email ever did or ever can.

    6. Re:Or.. by antdude · · Score: 1

      For real-time communication?

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  5. This is not a Slack Competitor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is not a Slack Competitor. This is a version of Facebook and the OpenGraph that is hosted in the cloud that is walled off from everyone who doesn't have the same @companyname.com email address. That is all. You are able to link your company email account to your full Facebook Profile, but that is all.

    1. Re:This is not a Slack Competitor by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      So.....it's a Yammer competitor?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re: This is not a Slack Competitor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, you could say it's a yammer competitor. It's a bit like the original Facebook, but more focused on groups, totally separate, with privacy guarantees and without ads.

    3. Re:This is not a Slack Competitor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And Yammer is going away to be replaced with Skype Teams with SharePoint Online Groups as their backend. This way MSFT migrates everything to a single Office / SharePoint Online back end.

  6. This Is Awesome! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now there will be at least two chat websites that I have zero use for.

  7. Every place I've worked in the last 15 years used by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Windows Messenger or Lync or now Skype for Business since MS has phased out Lync in favor of Skype. Good luck breaking that monopoly. And I've had a dozen jobs in 15 years. I have never even heard of Slack. Their market share must be single digits.

  8. The real question. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does it allow employers to retain communication without jumping through hipster tokegrammer-induced paranoia hoops?

    If so, I'll order a dozen.

  9. Funny ... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    I heard about Slack just today. Installed it on my work Laptop as my customer is using it. I work at his site!

    Now on my way home I see a /. article about Slack, oops ... about a competitor, rofl

    As we are on it: there is another nice chat/messaging/voice that has great potential, Discord, from http://discordapp.com/

    It is aiming at gamers but also at companies.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    1. Re:Funny ... by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Slack is huge right now in Silicon Valley. To the point that some people will consider you technologically backward if you don't have it.
      I make an effort to not work with those kinds of people.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Funny ... by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

      Slack is okay, but I prefer Discord. Especially for large groups that are broken into smaller teams, with fluid memberships. I can see what any team I belong to at anytime, without being inundated by messages for everything. The Voice / Chat separation is also really nice, as we can Collaborate on chat, and on voice as needed.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    3. Re:Funny ... by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      Does anyone have any updates to these comparisons ?

      Slack vs HipChat
      http://slackvshipchat.com/

      Slack vs Discord
      https://www.slant.co/versus/45...

    4. Re:Funny ... by pete6677 · · Score: 1

      LOL techbros

    5. Re:Funny ... by Shados · · Score: 1

      Im really fond of Discord myself, but its hard to use it in a work environment, because its missing a ton of features to make it work there. Search, auditing, various integrations (though you could code some of those yourself with the API), etc.

      But the Slack client is soooo slow.

    6. Re:Funny ... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Yeap.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    7. Re:Funny ... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I can see what any team I belong to at anytime,

      How often is this really a problem for you?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    8. Re:Funny ... by Gussington · · Score: 1

      I have to admit I don't get it. I have slack because all my devs use it, but it just seems like another IM/chat app just like the millions of IM/chat apps that came before it. Why is this so special?

    9. Re:Funny ... by Hulfs · · Score: 1

      It's special largely because of all the possibilities for integration into it with their SDK's and the automation you can very easily add into it that will allow you to build and execute all sorts of custom commands from the interface.

      The custom commands are pretty much just HTTPS requests (POST or GET) to any http endpoint, so the possibilities are pretty much endless what you can do with that.

      So it's not just a chat platform (though plenty of people use it solely for that), the real value is in it's dead simple integrations you can build with it.

      I'm sure there's like 5 other platforms that do something similar but Slack got the investment dollars so that's why it's popular.

    10. Re:Funny ... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      I think it's just IRC for people who never figured out how to set up an IRC server.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  10. Too little, too late .... by King_TJ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'll be *very* surprised if this catches on.
    There are plenty of people trying to sell corporate IM solutions -- and Facebook is a late entrant in this category.

    We adopted Slack and I had my doubts, initially, that it was even going to amount to much for our company. But it's proven itself to be pretty handy, largely because they gave a lot of ability to link up notifications and error messages from other applications to it, and everything put into Slack is persistent. (I can go back in a search and find a troubleshooting tip or a web URL that a co-worker mentioned months ago, if I need to.) Plus, it's cross-platform compatible with clients that work well on our iPads and iPhones, Windows PCs, Macs, etc.

    Still, we're finding ourselves in a situation where we've got an IM client built into our VoIP phone system's control panel on our computers, and Slack for our departmental communications, plus all of our Mac and Windows users long ago standardizing on using AOL's AIM messenger (linkable to Apple iMessages on the Mac) and publishing a directory of all of our employee's IM names in there. We're pretty saturated on corporate chat clients.

    Facebook has a relatively poor reputation in the workplace anyway, though. People consider it a time-waster and a site needing to be blocked in some instances.

    1. Re:Too little, too late .... by ADRA · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "People consider it a time-waster and a site needing to be blocked in some instances."

      I've worked in a few companies that have outright blocked the service. I don't see this catching on outside of some boutique shops that focus on social media... eh who knows.

      --
      Bye!
    2. Re:Too little, too late .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They have some major customers who have been very successful with it. Think about large international companies that have a lot of customer service representatives in brick and mortar stores that skew towards hiring college kids and recent grads.

    3. Re:Too little, too late .... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I'll be *very* surprised if this catches on.
      There are plenty of people trying to sell corporate IM solutions -- and Facebook is a late entrant in this category.

      I won't. Facebook may be a late entry but most of the other entries into the solution generally compare themselves to Facebook. The late entry can still be the gold standard on arrival.

      Also simplifying this down to "IM" is nonsense. This won't displace IM, and just like most other solutions IM forms a small part of the overall product.

      Facebook has a relatively poor reputation in the workplace anyway, though. People consider it a time-waster and a site needing to be blocked in some instances.

      Just like a receptionist who spends all day on the phone chatting to her girlfriends the phone as a tool can be used with very great differences in business efficiency depending on who's on the other end of the line. Facebook isn't blocked because it's Facebook. Facebook is blocked because it's your 100% non-work related friends using it.

    4. Re:Too little, too late .... by Gussington · · Score: 1

      Facebook has a relatively poor reputation in the workplace anyway, though. People consider it a time-waster and a site needing to be blocked in some instances.

      Time wasting is the least concern. Data privacy and security is the big one, and FB have a history of being extremely dodgy in this regard.
      FB also has a reputation of being a stupid app for teenagers and Kardashian type fans, why would any corporation who wants to be taken seriously want to associate with this universe?

    5. Re:Too little, too late .... by Gussington · · Score: 1

      I won't. Facebook may be a late entry but most of the other entries into the solution generally compare themselves to Facebook.

      Wait, what? I've never heard of any IM/chat app comparing themselves to FB.

      Facebook is blocked because it's your 100% non-work related friends using it.

      No, FB is blocked because we have a data security policy which FB fails miserably. No bank or government department is going to allow this, and the same goes for most large orgs that have similar policies

    6. Re:Too little, too late .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Slack API is why we use it. I was able to write an interface that will send real time incidents to a slack channel from AWS. And the techs can issue pre defined commands to the 'bot' to take action.

    7. Re: Too little, too late .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So a ticketing system. Congrats on reinventing the wheel boys.

    8. Re:Too little, too late .... by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Wait, what? I've never heard of any IM/chat app comparing themselves to FB.

      Just scroll down slightly to get to the next article talking about another business application which is "like a business version of facebook". Seriously if you haven't heard or seen it then you must just have flat out avoided the marketing of many of these "collaboration" programs built on the principles of social networks.

      No, FB is blocked because we have a data security policy which FB fails miserably.

      Implying that one data security policy is standard throughout the entire organisation. If you look at it with this level of detail and prejudice then you have no business dictating data security policy. Pretty much every enterprise software solution has a consumer face that does nothing but try and suck data for marketing value. The top of the Fortune 500 companies happily partner with the likes of Microsoft for things like OneDrive for business with no mention of the Windows 10 data harvesting. Google happily reads all my email while their policy is completely hands-off for those of my employer. Oracle will give you a wonderful database server with so little knowledge about you that the screw up the implementation while at the same time partnering with Ask Jeeves to screw over any consumer who's ever heard the Oracle name.

      If you think FB's data security policies are the same for their business product as for Facebook itself you're delusional.

    9. Re:Too little, too late .... by Gussington · · Score: 1

      Just scroll down slightly to get to the next article talking about another business application which is "like a business version of facebook".

      Yes but all of those are trying to do the newsfeed/broadcast aspect of social media (eg Yammer) and failing miserably. FB is not IM (even if it has a messenger app), and IM is not social media. Related but different.

      The top of the Fortune 500 companies happily partner with the likes of Microsoft for things like OneDrive for business with no mention of the Windows 10 data harvesting.

      My background is Finance and Gov and I assure the security/privacy rules here are strict. Sure maybe not for everyone but this model does exist.

      If you think FB's data security policies are the same for their business product as for Facebook itself you're delusional.

      Doesn't matter, their name is worthless in these circles. Reputation also counts, and FB is like McDonalds trying to get into the Michelin Guide.

  11. Remind me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why do we need this again?

  12. Re:Every place I've worked in the last 15 years us by psyclone · · Score: 2

    Slack is almost a 3 billion dollar company based on a recent valuation.

    It's pretty fancy. And with all that revenue they made something great out of what XMPP could have been.

  13. Custom kitchen delivereeyeeyee by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

    What's that? Hawaii noises? He's banging on them bongos like a chimpanzee.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  14. Re:Every place I've worked in the last 15 years us by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    Bullshit valuation. They are living off of VC cash. They claim 200k paid users. What revenue?

  15. Fuck. That. Shit. by flacco · · Score: 1

    I don't use FB in my personal life, and I consider Slack invasive enough at work to be barely tolerable.

    --
    pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
  16. Gitter Is Better by friedmud · · Score: 1

    Not sure why everyone loves Slack. I use it for one of my teams... the other uses Gitter.

    Overall Gitter is much nicer. Direct integration with GitHub by default and wonderful Markdown integration. You can even put Latex right into the chat window!

    Also, we like how you can have public rooms mixed with private rooms... something that's basically not possible with Slack.

    Will be interesting to see how Facebook@Work stacks up...

    1. Re:Gitter Is Better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's because not everybody is a programmer you thoughtless twit.

  17. Parse.com Anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The last time fb tried to sell a business-critical piece of software, they pulled the rug out from under devs after less than 2 years. (They had the decency to open source the Parse platform... but still.)

    Slack is already such an established player, with great integrations across the board. Why would I switch my team's vital communications to an unreliable vendor that is already known for its spyware-like tendencies?

  18. Fascinating ... by Qbertino · · Score: 1

    I find it fascinating how these days companies can charge bizar amounts of money for things we have enjoyed for free for decades. IRC is a perfect solution and yet people buy into slack - itself an IRC rippoff with an OK web interface included.

    Same with Office Products. Office365 costs 40 Euros per seat and month. And people are actually paying for this. Imagine Microsoft coming up with such a thing in the 90ies. People would've peed their pants laughing.

    It's fascinating the way our entire society is being brainwashed into access culture. Scary but fascinating. Like sheep. And they don't even notice.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
  19. Hey Dawg by djsmiley · · Score: 1

    I use facebook@work so I can facebook@work on facebook@work while I'm on facebook@work!

    --
    - http://www.milkme.co.uk