Facebook is banned in many workplaces, but the social network isn't giving up on its ambitions to make its way to the corporate office. A report by the Financial Times says Facebook is working on its own platform for work.
Dubbed Facebook at Work, the new Facebook platform is said to hit two birds with one stone. The FT cites "people familiar with the matter" who say that Facebook at Work will function very similarly to the way the regular Facebook does, with its own News Feed, instant messaging service and groups, but without the baby pictures, funny videos and political rants that usually litter a regular News Feed.
By allowing users to connect with their professional contacts, Facebook at Work gives Facebook a chance at beating LinkedIn, Microsoft's Yammer and Salesforce.com's Chatter at their own game.
The sources said Facebook at Work will also allow workers to share documents and collaborate remotely in real-time, making it a competitor for existing online collaboration services such as Google Drive.
The new platform will work similarly to how smartphones are being equipped with multiple accounts so users can separate their personal and work files into two separate digital containers, so they can easily switch between multiple accounts once the work day winds down.
Facebook at Work has been a project of engineers, some of whom are based in London, the sources say, for the past year. Facebook workers are reportedly testing Facebook at Work at their own offices and the social network has been discussing rolling it out for the general public "for some time."
Facebook currently has 1.3 billion active users, and a new work-focused Facebook could snatch some of the market share from other business-centric social networks such as LinkedIn, which has 90 million users. One reason for this is the fact that many office workers already use Facebook while inside the office.
A recent survey conducted by Salary.com shows 23 percent of respondents waste their time at work by going on Facebook. Also, majority of American office workers already use Facebook, which means they wouldn't have to climb up a steep learning curve to learn the ins and outs of Facebook at Work.
However, Facebook does face some serious challenges in trying to persuade corporations to sign up to Facebook at Work. With the social network's notorious reputation for treating privacy with a careless approach, Facebook has to prove to businesses that their information, especially their trade secrets, are safe on the social network's servers.
"To become an integral part of office life, Facebook will need to win the trust of companies and organizations, which will expect to be able to conduct confidential conversations and share important information on the site, without it falling into the hands of rivals," says the Financial Times.
Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges that Facebook's irresponsible approach to user privacy has definitely cost the company. Facebook has been trying to make changes in its privacy policy recently, and Zuckerberg himself says Facebook is undergoing an "important cultural shift" to address the privacy and security needs of users and ensure that engagement is still at a maximum to extract the highest fees from advertisers.
One of its recent moves to demonstrate its change of mind about privacy is the rollout of the new Facebook Rooms, an anonymous message board for mobile where users can join discussions on all sorts of topics they would rather not talk about while everyone else knows their identity.
However, Facebook has a long way to go to clean up a marred reputation. After all, privacy is not just about putting new technologies in place. It also requires a change of heart.
