In mid-February, Canadian Tire became the first Canadian retailer and second largest company in the world to launch Facebook at Work for its employees. Launched without much fanfare late last year, Facebook at Work lets businesses create their own social networks among their employees that are built to look and act like Facebook itself.
Designed for mobile, Facebook at Work enables employees "to check in on news and collaborate from the office or while on the go," according to a statement. Common Facebook functions such as posting, sharing, commenting, images, messenger, video and video chat are all available. Separate from a consumer Facebook profile, data shared on Facebook at Work is secured within the company's network.
"It is a true game changer and has created an online space where we can tap into each other's ideas and knowledge and get information faster regardless of location, department or level," said Michael Medline, Canadian Tire's president and CEO, on the company's recent conference call with analysts.
Facebook at Work will compete with Microsoft's Yammer, Slack, Convo, Socialcast, and countless others in the "enterprise social network" space. Other majors include Google, which enables employees to share documents and data; as well as LinkedIn and Salesforce.com.
Like others, a big challenge for Facebook at Work is enabling workers to use it without disrupting their everyday workflow. It also has to prove itself as an improvement over e-mail.
Julien Codorniou, director of global platform partnerships for Facebook at Work, told The Wall Street Journal that e-mail is "an inherently top-down method of communication meant for broadcasting information as opposed to exchanging it."
What Facebook at Work has going for it is that no enterprise social software tool has widely gained traction and its familiarity with Facebook users.
"If somebody comes into the company, they know how to use this tool from day one," Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, told re/code.
- Canadian Tire ushers in new era of digital collaboration with Facebook at Work - Canadian Tire
- Join Facebook at Work - Facebook
- Canadian Tire Corporation's Fourth Quarter Conference Call - Seeking Alpha
- Facebook Plans to Shape Up Social Software for Work in 2016 - The Wall Street Journal (sub. required)
- Facebook Is About to Take the Training Wheels off Facebook at Work - Re/code