There are no shortage of items on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plate. Sometime in the coming months, presumably, he has drones to manufacture and launch to begin beaming Internet connections to far-flung areas of the globe. Then there's incorporating the world's most popular mobile instant messaging app, WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired in February 2014 for $16 billion (mostly in Facebook stock), and is slowly assimilating into all things Facebook. Video ads, monetizing Instagram, which Facebook acquired in April 2012 for $1 billion, finding new and better uses for Facebook's new virtual reality headgear maker Oculus, which Facebook acquired in March 2014 for $2 billion, and targeting small business owners are a few other "to-dos."
But that's why Zuckerberg's surrounded himself with quality people, to keep all those Facebook fires burning. And if the rumors are true, delegating at least some of Facebook's latest ventures has freed Zuckerberg and his tech team to explore yet another, potentially game-changing, alternative: [email protected]. Depending on what direction [email protected] opts to take, assuming it comes to fruition, it could land right in professional networking leader LinkedIn's sandbox.
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What's all this about [email protected]?
It should be noted that rumors involving what some are calling [email protected] have swirled, off and on, for a few years. But the scuttlebutt has picked up steam of late after an infamous, "anonymous" source, this one supposedly a Facebook insider, spilled the beans. Apparently, the [email protected] initiative is being spear-headed in Facebook's London office, which has added some fuel to the speculation fire.
Lars Rasmussen shows off Google Wave in May 2009 (Click Image To Enlarge)
Why? Because the Facebook London team is led by Lars Rasmussen, a former Google exec who just happened to spearhead Wave, a collaborative tool that was shelved about four years ago after being ignored by users. Wave was designed to be a real-time instant messenger and data-sharing solution. That sounds awfully similar to the rumors swirling around Facebook right now.
Google Wave screenshot in May 2009 (Click Image To Enlarge)
Whether Facebook decides to go all-in with an enterprise solution, or simply offer businesses a cleaner, scaled-down version of what is essentially the Facebook pages we've come to know, isn't clear. But the revenue-enhancing possibilities of either option -- advertising, selling the [email protected] solution as a separate entity, garnering and utilizing even more user data to name but a few -- certainly make a business solution worth pondering.
Top Social Networks Comparison Chart (Click Image To Enlarge)
Would it make sense?
If you're a fan of LinkedIn, unfortunately it's been a dismal year. With its stock price down over 23% in 2014 -- compared to Facebook's 23% jump in the same period -- LinkedIn is being questioned like never before. With its string of improving year-over-year revenue growth from three distinct lines of business, LinkedIn has enjoyed a lot of positive investor sentiment. But fundamental concerns surrounding its business and declining income have some industry pundits less than enamored. Is LinkedIn vulnerable?
LinkedIn vs Facebook share prices since the start of 2014 (Click Image To Enlarge)
With about four times LinkedIn's 300 million plus members, Facebook's 1.28 billion monthly active users (MAUs) number is astounding. As it continues to grow its user base every quarter, that growth certainly isn't coming domestically. Why? Because seemingly every U.S. citizen who has access to the Internet, and likely even some who don't, are Facebook users. And with Zuckerberg's mission to bring the Internet to the world, Facebook could saturate the planet as it has the U.S.
Leveraging all those users to take on LinkedIn, even indirectly, would seem natural. And Facebook certainly doesn't shy away from taking on large-scale initiatives. Make no mistake, delving into LinkedIn's world of professional networking requires a major commitment. But the upsides of building a solution to share data and ideas across an organization would warrant the effort. And it's not such a stretch when you consider that companies have already adapted Facebook's Group functionality as a pseudo-platform for business, primarily using Facebook's Group feature and Messenger.
Top Social Network Platform Comparisons As Marketing Tools (Click Image To Enlarge)
Final Foolish thoughts
Motley Fools knows trading on rumors is short-term thinking, and a recipe for long-term disaster. However, even if [email protected] doesn't come to fruition -- though there's tremendous potential should it decide to -- it reinforces the notion that Facebook has multiple ways to continue its phenomenal growth, some of which have not even been considered yet. All those opportunities should keep Facebook investors smiling, and keep LinkedIn fans watching their backs.
COMMENTARY: The phrase “Facebook at work” usually suggests people frittering away the day on the social network and not actually doing their jobs. But according to an anonymous source inside Facebook, the company is working on a way to put the social network into a more positive light in the office. It is building an at-work version of Facebook.
The source says.
“We are making work more fun and efficient by building an at-work version of Facebook. We will touch code throughout the stack and on all platforms (web, iOS, Android, etc.).”
The source, who refers it as “[email protected]”, says the effort is based in London.
What’s not clear is whether [email protected] is something being built as an internal enterprise communication platform, or whether there are ambitions to leverage Facebook to drive new business, by giving people a way to interface with the hundreds of millions of people who already use it to market their businesses and themselves — along the lines of LinkedIn.
A spokesperson for Facebook says the company doesn’t comment on rumor or speculation and has “nothing to add at this point.”
Using Facebook for internal communications already exists on a less formal basis.
One ex-Facebook employee told TechCrunch.
“Everyone at Facebook uses Facebook for work. Most of their communication and planning is done though Messages and Groups. It would be a pretty natural thing to try to expose this way of using Facebook to get things done at the office to the rest of the world. It’s a really fast and efficient way to get things done.”
Essentially, from what I understand, at Facebook, every team has its own Group, and when they join and leave the company or change roles, they are added or removed from the relevant Groups. They have authentication security built into them and are synchronized with the company’s wider HR database.
This answer from 2012 to a Quora question, about what tools Facebookers use to communicate with each other, also details how Facebook uses Groups, email and chat; and how it has built a couple of tools internally — Pixelcloud for sharing and commenting on images (including new design prototypes), an in-house-built task management tool that’s compared to Asana — among other external platforms. Added to that these days is Quip, the mobile-first word-processing platform co-founded by Facebook’s former CTO Bret Taylor.
Tellingly, that Quora answer was penned by a Facebook engineer who is now based in London — where the “[email protected]” project is supposedly based. The engineering team in London, incidentally, is headed up by Lars Rasmussen, one of the two people behind Graph Search who relocated to London from Facebook’s HQ in 2013.
Before joining Facebook, Rasmussen developed Google Wave, a promising-looking collaboration product that was eventually discontinued when Google couldn’t get enough user traction.
External companies are also already using Facebook for work, too.
Clara Shih, the CEO of Hearsay Social, told TechCrunch.
“Facebook Groups and Group Messaging have already been transformative for how we communicate and collaborate at Hearsay Social. As a social media software company, we know 100% of our employees are on Facebook. Rather than reinvent the wheel or ask employees to login to yet another system, we decided to create a private, unlisted Facebook Group to house many of our real-time company chats and conversations.”
At the same time, two other sources told TechCrunch that Facebook has been talking about launching a Facebook for enterprises product for three or four years already.
But the starts and stops of that effort speak both to the opportunities and challenges of doing so.
Another ex-Facebooker told TechCrunch.
“I keep hearing rumors about this. This is one of the two projects that constantly get started and come close to being launched but have been cancelled at the last minute.”
With Facebook for minors, the privacy hurdles have been too high. With enterprise, the problem was different the same source said:
“Facebook employees find using Facebook for work communication really useful, but it wasn’t clear whether it would serve a broader demand.”
At the same time, the idea of launching a whole new service raises questions about how this might fit into Facebook’s wider business.
The social network has made inroads here and there with revenue streams beyond advertising and into areas like virtual currency, e-commerce, and, allegedly, money transfers.
So the question would be whether Facebook could potentially monetise software services or simply offer them as useful but free tools, whose value is simply in getting people more engaged and spending more time on the social network. A business that does that, after all, may end up seeing the value of Facebook more and then translating that into other services, like buying ads.
One of the sources told TechCrunch.
“It’s hard for me to believe that this would be a significant revenue opportunity for Facebook. They may charge but ultimately decide not to.”
On a different front, another person claims that Facebook has had wider plans for an enterprise product that might, say, compete more with the likes of LinkedIn.
This source told TechCrunch.
“This has been on the list of things to do for three years but just has’t made it to the top of the list.”
Tellingly, though, there are sticking points for such a service.
The source said.
“Facebook is thought of as a community and place for friends, and LinkedIn feels more transactional. Facebook has to be careful not to lose that community appeal.”
There have already been moves at Facebook to build out ways of bridging CRM databases with the social network, but these appear to be mainly in the realm of advertising, as in the case of Custom Audience ads launched at a Salesforce Dreamforce conference in 2012.
Putting any skepticism aside, there are obvious opportunities if Facebook — now with over 1 billion users — did ever launch “[email protected]”
Shih, who, in a previous role at Salesforce, was an early mover in the area of leveraging Facebook to build sales contacts with an app called Faceconnector, told TechCrunch.
“Both the ‘consumerization of IT’ trend as well as blurring of personal/professional online identity create opportunities for Facebook to play a role in enterprise services. Certainly, the message at the most recent f8 of ‘move fast with stable infrastructure’ is a departure from the very anti-enterprise ‘move fast and break things’ motto of the past. Other consumer platforms, from Google Apps to LinkedIn, have built successful enterprise businesses and functionality, so perhaps Facebook will follow suit.”
Conclusion and Closing Statements
I hate posting rumors, but they are sometimes fun to explore and try to expond upon. One thing is true, Facebook's user growth has flattened in well developed countries like the U.S., the U.K. and nations of Western Europe, and most of Facebook's growth is now coming from Asia, India and South America. International growth will eventually peak and flatten out as well, so that Facebook's advertising revenues, will eventually peak and flatten out as well. It is inevitable.
Having said this, Facebook must become less dependent on advertising revenues, and offer services to SMB's and large corporations. [email protected], in which ever form it finally takes, could eventually include human resources applications and recruiting services like those offered by LinkedIn. So yes, Facebook is very likely to present a real threat to LinkedIn. Whether [email protected] can offer human resources applications and recruting services as efficiently as LinkedIn remains to be seen. LinkedIn has first-mover advantages by being the first and biggest social network for professionals, has conquered the learning curve, has well established relationships with HR departments at both SMB's and large corporatons, and has creditability and experience on its side.
If [email protected] is to become a true competitor to LinkedIn, it must expand its user profile to include current and past employers, educational background and accomplishments. This will require a completely new expanded "corporate" version of Facebook that incorporates this type of information. I don't see this happening for years. Many Facebook users will be reluctant to opt-in to [email protected] and duplicate the same information they already have at LinkedIn.
To make my point: When Google+ came on the seen three years ago, Facebook prevented app developers from using their apps to allow users to download their Facebook user profile information and migrate it to Google+. This effectively "blocked" Facebook users from easily migrating to Google+ without entering their complete profile date all over again. I see LinkedIn taking similar defensive measures to "block" migration of their user profiles to [email protected] Folks, it's going to be a war, and this could become the Achilles heel of [email protected], You can bet that LinkedIn is not going to lay down and takeover their turf.
Courtesy of an article dated June 29, 2014 appearing in Motley Fool
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