Chan Nga Yan, 1155081733
Ms. Zoey Chung, guest speaker from Facebook has shared with us the visions and missions of Facebook and its family apps. I was tremendously amazed to learn that there are so many projects and development going on behind our daily usage of the personal and business pages. For example the building of the solar-powered internet plane to beam Wi-Fi to remote parts of the world, using artificial intelligence to help blind people engage in Facebook and the development in Oculus VR are indeed beyond my imaginations.
It is no doubt that Facebook has already been successfully grown into a giant among social media market, connecting over billions of people around the world. However, what intrigue me the most from Zoey’s sharing is the potential of B2B communications on Facebook. Most people see Facebook only as a leisure tool, but in fact it has been proven by research that 24% of Americans use social media at work to make or support professional connections, while 20% to get information that helps them solve problems at work and 17% to build or strengthen personal relationships with coworkers. (Kenneth Olmstead, Cliff Lampe and Nicole B. Ellison, 2016) Take myself as an example, being a public relations practitioner in the hospitality and F&B industries, I am a heavy Facebook uses. I log onto the Facebook with desktops and mobiles over 10 times every day. Facebook has helped a lot in keeping myself up-to-date with the hottest topics and events in town, as well as where the media and KOLs have been up to. Sometimes it is even more convenient to use Facebook Massager for communications and media relationship buildings. With the supports of Facebook’s database, user activity logs FB alongside the actual market needs, I believe it has a huge potential to become a B2B business tools for corporate use.
Zoey shared that Facebook has already developed Facebook Workplace to serve the B2B purposes. I have done some researches after her sharing - Facebook Workplace is basically a separate platform from a user’s personal Facebook account, where enable the user to connect everyone in your company and turn ideas into action. Through group discussion, a personalised News Feed, and voice and video calling, work together and get more done.
Source: https://workplace.fb.com
It is now starting with a very approachable rate with half a year trial and after that it is charging progressively with US$3 monthly per user for the first 1,000 active users and US$2 for the next 9,000, after that US$1 per user. While it is free of charge for non-profits and educational institutions. I would say it is very worthy as the whole package is comparative comprehensive, including unlimited file, photo, and video storage, unlimited team and project groups, 1:1 support for administrators, secure collaboration between companies and free integration with the company’s current system etc. (Facebook Workplace, 2016)
The Facebook Workplace looks promising to me. With its low set up cost and unlimited storage space, it certainly can attract many small medium businesses, as well as new startups with a few employees. I believe many of us has encountered a situation that, we had some work related discussions with our peers and superiors, in or out of working hours. A few weeks after that, when we wanted to retrieve the conversations, we could not recall whether it is from Email, Whatsapp, WeChat or Facebook Messenger, or even bit and pieces everywhere. With the adaption of the Workplace, the problem can be easily solved, as the platform has basically covered all our daily work activities: brainstorming, team communications, getting approval from bosses, conference calls, collaboration between teams, project tracking. Especially in the marketing, public relations, advertising fields, as everyone is already spending a great deal of time on Facebook already, might as well just put their work space up there as well to save time and efforts. To me the Workplace sounds like an ideal working space. Yet, it would be further better if online reservations and payments can also be supported to create a one stop B2B platform for corporates.
However, it is also understandable that some corporates may have security and data migration concerns on the Facebook Workplace, as they may have to host their years of works and confidential information onto Facebook's virtual space. Though Facebook has its words on trust principles, it would still need to take to make a great effort to convince the well-established corporates.
References:
Kenneth Olmstead, Cliff Lampe and Nicole B. Ellison (2016, June 22). Social Media and the Workplace. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/06/22/social-media-and-the-workplace
Dear Hazel,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your sharing! Good recap and you did a good research about the Facebook Workplace!
B2B SNSs are hard to survive compared with personal SNSs because there are concerns about security, user habits, and the quality of the professional features these services provide. Take WeChat for an example, it also had a corporate version with similar functions as Facebook Workplace but it didn't turn out well cause some companies already have their own internal communication tools to benefit their work and other companies also feel troublesome about switching from different platforms all the time(sometimes you have to contact your client, but your client may not use the corporate version of a certain communication tool).
Some other SNS like LinkedIn has already built up reputation for work-related social media and they may also have started some similar projects. But Facebook still has a chance. More hard work is needed to dig some deep customer deeps and pain points.
Cherry