Shutting Down Facebook Workplace
Facebook once had big ambitions to be a major player in enterprise communication and productivity, but today the social network’s parent company Meta will be closing a very significant chapter in that story. TechCrunch has learned that Meta is shuttering Workplace, a version of Facebook that had been built to enable communication among business teams and wider organizations.
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According to a memo to Workplace customers, the company is is recommending Zoom-owned Workvivo as a migration-ready alternative.
TechCrunch reports that development slowed considerably after people returned to offices that had been empty due to the covid pandemic and after a number of key employees left. The shift popped the bubble for an increasingly crowded space for remote work tools. Stronger competition from Microsoft Teams, Google Workplace, and even new entrants like Zoom Workplace caused Meta to slow down after a decade of development.
Meta is discontinuing their enterprise offering Workplace, which per my estimates was a >$150M ARR business.
Just a reminder the scale big tech is at for business lines to be meaningful to them
Well this sucks. I liked Workplace, both at Meta and currently at Keen.
I assume Meta will continue maintaining their internal version, rather than adopting the suggested commercial option, which may have similar downsides to their continued use of Mercurial vs Git.
Previously:
Update (2024-05-17): David Heinemeier Hansson:
The traditional wisdom goes that if you buy from a big company, you’re going to be safe. It may be more expensive, but big companies project an image of stability and reliability, so buying their wares is seen as the prudent choice. Except, it isn’t.
Update (2024-06-04): Dan Grover:
The genius of FB Workplace (and its sole redeeming attribute that makes up for other flaws) is the emphasis on lightweight signals of engagement (reactions and “read” indicators, etc). In the absence of that, in an async env with other tools, you are forever scheduling meetings to say “Okay, did you actually see this? Were there parts you disagreed with?” on very minor things.
This is normal to do (even at FB) on like big project proposals, designs, etc. But I find myself constantly in doubt on like individual Slack messages these days.
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I thought the "No one ever got fired " quote just meant you covered YOUR ass. Not that the service would be around, or even work. It's just a way of saying "Come on guys, I got the most expensive well known stuff! You can't say I didn't do any research!"
@Kristoffer I think it’s traditionally meant both. It was expected that IBM and Microsoft would keep supporting old stuff.
