A few years ago, Facebook tried to get its users to make it their homepage. The experiment didn’t go well, but the company apparently hasn't stopped trying to make the regrettably indispensable social media network even more omnipresent in our lives than it already is.
Wired reports that the endeavor is a Microsoft Yammer rival called Facebook for Work, and its main selling point seems to be that it’s all white instead of that giveaway, not-quite-navy-blue that is totally obvious from your supervisor’s desk across the room. And, as Wired noted, “you use it to connect to colleagues who may or may not be friends.” Considering how many fake friends we all have to drag along forever (because unfriending someone boring when you have 30 mutuals is awkward), getting bombarded with pics of what Doug in Accounting ate for lunch sounds depressing.
Facebook for Work is still being tested, but apparently, it’s what Facebook employees have been using internally for a while now. The functionality is no different than regular FB, although it’s an entirely separate phone app, and functions as a standalone portal on a desktop — meaning the real purpose would seem to be supplanting a given office’s intranet. Global growth has slowed, and teenagers don’t like it (sorta), so this is Facebook’s new avenue for expansion. And it’s both free and ad-free (at least for now, according to TechCrunch).
Curiously, you don’t need to have a Facebook account to use Facebook for Work. In fact, even if you’re one of those valiant souls who misses out on a lot of party invites and anti-Muni rants by deliberately eschewing social media, you’re going to wind up using it if that’s what your office decides on. It is, as Wired put it, “a separate Facebook identity specifically for sharing with colleagues.” Hmm, I seem to recall a certain CEO recently reiterating a longstanding belief that having more than one identity meant a lack of integrity. Except when it suits them, that is.
[Via Wired, image from Thinkstock]
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