Late last year Facebook made splash with the announcement of Workplace.
Social networks for business are nothing new of course, but when The Book puts its weight behind the concept you know something’s up. Enterprise social network software vendors have tried to carve out a niche with collaborative portals for years – all with limited success.
Will Facebook dominate the space? From first glance it looks like it has a compelling story to tell compared with both traditional enterprise software companies and the likes of Google, Twitter and LinkedIn (Microsoft). Facebook is a familiar interface and many people use it to collaborate every day.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Facebook is whether people will actually use it for productive tasks instead of simply a social space for coworkers.
What’s the alternative?
There are plenty of commercial and open source social enterprise options so Facebook hasn’t captured all your data yet. One that stands out is BuddyPress.
BuddyPress is private, feature-rich, open source and based on WordPress, the familiar content system used by millions. Given the ubiquity of WordPress, BuddyPress could be the little social network that could provide a viable alternative to cloud-only options.
An easy way to collaborate with coworkers using WordPress? That is worth sharing.
