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Comment by a_imho | Hacker News Reader

I don't really see a point, partly because social and work don't mix in my dictionary, partly because I consider Enterprise Communication a solved problem. What is the incentive to move away from e.g. an already integrated Atlassian stack?

Maybe it can be an option for new companies? It is hard to tell without the pricing information.

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Can't really tell if you are serious if you are claiming "enterprise communication is a solved problem" (it isn't) and in the next sentence mention an Atlassian stack. Funny you should mention Altassian though, because while everyone is going to compare this to Slack, IMHO it is second-tier services with shitty UX like Atlassian who are going to get hosed by FB@work.

Most companies I worked at used Atlassian products, but feel free to use any other services as examples. Personally I think the FB UX is one of the worst out there, but each to their own I guess.

Well, ymmv of course, but for me the technical aspects were solved by email long ago and imo dysfunctional communication mostly a human problem. It is very hard / impossible to fix pebkac with technology and from what I reading FB@W does not bring anything new to the table in that regard.

I would agree that it's not "solved", but I do think that there are many non-paid solutions that will satisfy the majority of small to medium businesses. Slack-likes seemed to be pretty popular for awhile, and most are feature competitive as far as the internal communication aspect that Work at Facebook, sans the video chat.

I'm a little torn on this as the product itself does seem like a natural use for Facebook's platform, and I'm mildly surprised they didn't do this soon. On the same note, that they didn't do this sooner makes it feel a bit more "me too", and I'm not confident the adoption rate will be strong enough to justify it going forward. Since the UI is just a mildly tweaked version of vanilla Facebook, I wonder if they had internal numbers showing that people were already doing this to justify the commitment, or if they're just hoping it will stick. I honestly feel the Facebook UI is just way too cramped and smooshed for being all that productive with, but I am also not an avid facebook user, so my opinion may be worthless. (I think VK's layout is a lot cleaner, for example...)

Right now I'm not convinced Facebook is offering enough to convince any existing users to migrate. I'm not sure it offers anything enticing over other Slack-likes to really convince users to pick it over other services. Though I appreciate them separating the two types of accounts, I think this just raises the barrier of entry, which was already pretty high compared to others.

Exactly, social and work don't mix. Most want them kept well apart. No way I'm letting FB link my work with my social lives and no way I'd trust them not to.

There is always the risk of them buying LinkedIn but people aren't going to make it easy.

"You just create a new Facebook at Work account to connect with coworkers. This account is separate from your personal Facebook but works in similar ways." (https://work.fb.com)

Riiiiight.

They absolutely will not mix personal and work Facebooks.

Plenty of companies have blocked [www|m].facebook.com at the firewall, for reasons of productivity and data protection. Facebook-the-company will not jeopardise the chances of adoption of this product by doing anything that will make work.facebook.com fall foul of a similar fate.

Pity they didn't just call it Workbook, then we wouldn't have had all this confusion. Or Workface :)

Mix? No. Share? Of course they will.

You haven't looked at it at all have you ?

When you work at a company you don't really have a word after a HiPPO decision.

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