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Comment by nightcracker | Hacker News Reader

Could you explain what features make it so good for your use case?

I could, but to actually understand you have to try out, because it's an experienced quality and not some a thing that is amenable to description.

Before the corp FB instance we had Wikis, Email, Mailing Lists, Jabber and an internal "Youtube" like Video Store. It all sucked.

With the FB instance, the awareness of what goes on in other parts of the company is much higher, the noise level is lower, communication is more timely and generally you feel less stressed out. Email numbers are down, mailing lists practically do not exist any more (except for machine communication such as commit messages), things organize neatly in FB groups, and you kind of automatically find the groups that are relevant to work. The Wiki hardly sees discussion any more, and is mostly documentation.

There are a lot of problems in Workplace by Facebook, mostly in the messenger product (no spatial metaphor, i.e. no rooms, only groups, being the largest). But in general it has been an amazing improvement on what we had before.

My boss is deseperately trying to convince me that my project wiki can painlessly be replaced by Microsoft Team (build upon share point). Yet this is utter bullshit every workaround he proposed to replace missing feature look like regressions that will make us spend more time on solving share point issue than on actually writing documentation.

You seems satisfied with FB for business and you claimed it could advantageous replace multiple wikis. Can you develop your though cause from the outside it look like the same bullshit that salespersons will use to sell MS Team to gullible boss.

> My boss is deseperately trying to convince me that my project wiki can painlessly be replaced by Microsoft Team (build upon share point).

In my experience, the words "SharePoint" and "painless" do not exactly go well together.

Facebook Work is a communication tool. It doesn’t replace your wiki. The only real affordable is Notes, which solves the “update email” case, but not evergreen documentation case.

Facebook use Quip for wiki-like solution as well as some internal tools.

My bad op mentioned that they kept wiki for doc. Read to fast sorry.

Experience couldn't be more different for us. We also use the "Faceplace" as it has become "affectionately" known.

Everyone just turns off the notifications on the freaking thing, so really important things are still sent out via email.

It's corporate/business thing, right? And yet they kept the useless alrgorithmic feed. Just yesterday I couldn't find an important management post because it was buried below random crap from a dozen or so groups, and people, and events, and...

Well, it also sends email for some (not all) notifications. The email preview contains a total of 6 words from the original text and forces you to go to the crap.

Every single post including the really important ones are five lines of text with a "see more" link. Oh, and half of those texts are created as documents/notes (which are different from regular posts), reposted to half a dozen different groups that all show up in your timeline (nothing like seeing the same text 10 times I guess).

And it continuously nags you to get their crap good-for-nothing Chat App (just look at the f*ing thing https://grumpy.website/post/0PSSXS3k8).

Facebook cannot even imagine that business needs of business clients are not driven by engagement numbers, or by MAUs, or by LTVs or by any metric that is relevant to Facebook.

EDIT: Rephrased some sentences

EDIT 2: Re: replies to my comments. "Oh, it's da bomb, only you need to <a list of multiple things to setup before it's even remotely useless>". Stockholm syndrome in full swing

You need to turn off email notifications but carefully select which groups to leave notifications on for (and some you can use the “highlight” setting). Then every day or two you can use the “notifications” tool (the link on the left side bar) and quickly check all your notifications exhaustively and be sure not to miss anything (and as you do that refine your list of groups).

Used this way it’s an amazing tool for cross team collaboration, way superior to Slack which I used in my previous job but couldn’t keep up with.

Disclaimer: I just joined Facebook.

So, basically, spend countless hours tuning the most basic functionality. Skip the most useful functionality, as it's unusable (timeline and search, see other comments).

What an amazing tool though.

It takes no time to tune. If you see notifications from groups that bring little value, just turn them off. Very simple and natural process.

> carefully select which groups to leave notifications on for > every day or two you can use the “notifications” tool > as you do that refine your list of groups

So, continuous tuning for no reason at all.

Let's add things from other comments, shall we?

> The feed is pretty much useless. > You tune notifications to catch the “must read” stuff and filter out the rest of the noise. > STFU notifications, then carefully tune back in. > The feed is crap. Do not read the feed. Make a bookmark bar their search is crap.

etc. etc.

Facebook runs on Facebook. When I was there it worked really well.

You need to use it properly though. The feed is pretty much useless. Groups are where it’s at. Facebook has Company FYI groups, org-level FYI groups, Product team workspaces, etc. You tune notifications to catch the “must read” stuff and filter out the rest of the noise.

> You need to use it properly though.

"You're holding it wrong"

> <an unending list of things I have no desire to figure out or set up>

Why would I want any of that? :)

1. De-mail it in the preferences.

2. STFU notifications, then carefully tune back in.

3. The feed is crap. Do not read the feed. Make a bookmark bar:

3.1 https://companyname.facebook.com/chat/t/<..> Chat link

3.2 https://companyname.facebook.com/notifications/hub/all/ Notification hub link

3.3 https://companyname.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr Feed, force-chronological order, for hard cases only

3.4 https://companyname.facebook.com/profile.php?id=<your id here> Link to your profile, to write notes et al

3.5 https://companyname.facebook.com/groups/?category=membership Group Overview. This is your cockpit, basically

3.6 https://companyname.facebook.com/saved Saved Posts. Because their search is crap.

All I see is: "it's crap, and you have to work hard to make it even remotely useful" :)

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