Comments for Someone Please Build the Facebook Office

Someone Please Build the Facebook Office

2007-11-12T21:44:38Z

In July, when this blog ran our Facebook Week, there was one article that I had planned that never made it to press. The article, called "The Facebook Office," was going to take a look at how to use Facebook as a groupware app for your team. Unfortunately, except for a handful of applications that didn't really seem to play nice together (such as the ones I highlighted in in my Top 10 Facebook Apps: Work list), there was no way to create a cohesive groupware environment in Facebook.

The best I could come up with was to use a private group to keep everyone in the loop, use 30 Boxes's Calendar app to share important dates, and Zoho's Online Office app to share documents. Hardly a Basecamp killer.

Today, AllFacebook points to a new application from DivShare called Projects. Basecamp it is not, but we're getting there.

]]>

Projects is more or less a private wall for anyone in your project (you can invite any of your friends) and a file sharing tool. Yeah, that's it. No shared planning tools, no lists, no milestones, no calendar, no chat. The project page promises that you can "view your documents, video and audio in Flash, without a download," but I couldn't get it to work for documents (I tried txt and doc files). It did work with audio, though (I didn't have any video files under 300mb handy to test out) and images displayed in browser. Documents it asked me to download.

The Projects app is really just a private message board in Facebook (one with oddly differing timestamps for the Wall and Files sections). It's certainly nowhere near robust enough for professional teams to use, but it could be helpful for college students collaborating on school projects to share notes and files and chat asynchronously about their work.

However, this is a wide open area that I am really surprised no one has tried to get into. It would be very helpful to have a full fledged project management application in Facebook. Remembering multiple passwords to various web apps (if your team uses an ad hoc solution) or multiple passwords to Basecamp (if you have more than one team) is a pain. Keeping it all under the Facebook umbrella would be very convenient. With 6000 applications, it is hard to sort through them all, so if you know of any project management or groupware apps on Facebook already, or if you're developing one, please let us know.

Comment from Darren Stuart on 2007-11-12

2007-11-12T22:29:05Z

I don't see the point of office style apps inside facebook. Your only going to get side tracked by being attacked by a Pirate, Ninja, [INSERT ANY OBJECT]

Maybe an office party organizer for christmas but thats about it

Comment from Nick O'Neill on 2007-11-12

2007-11-12T22:38:10Z

Hey Josh,

Zoho launched a full fledged office solution on Facebook back in July. Here are the details:

http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/07/first-office-solution-for-facebook-launches/

Best,
Nick

Comment from Dave on 2007-11-12

2007-11-12T23:59:14Z

Josh -

We just launched a new application on Facebook last week called MyOffice. We think it's exactly what Facebook users will want out of a collaborative office application. We focused on making it simple and elegant, but provide more functionality than a Facebook group. It lets users:

* Schedule and agree to meetings
* Share files in one place
* Create to-do lists and track who's responsible for what
* Discuss ideas and collect feedback
* Configure privacy settings

Check it out here: MyOffice

Comment from Josh Catone on 2007-11-12

2007-11-13T00:26:43Z

@Darren: Possibly... but if you're using Facebook at work, you might get side tracked by those things anyway -- and/or the rest of the Internet (which can be a distracting place, let's face it). I think for distributed/telecommuting teams especially, I think the prospect of having a single place to log in and do everything you do (networking, socializing, project management, etc. etc.) is pretty powerful.

@Nick: Thanks! If I remember, correctly, though, the Zoho app is (or at least was) mostly just a wrapper that loaded the Zoho stuff in an iFrame (or something like an iFrame). Not super compelling.

@Dave: Very cool. Checking it out now. First impression is that this seems to be more in line with what I was thinking. :)

Comment from Tom on 2007-11-12

2007-11-13T01:00:08Z

"It would be very helpful to have a full fledged project management application in Facebook."

Jesus H Christ, why? Why would you want this? Not everything has to be available in everything else? Why not ask for a social network built inside Basecamp, or a calendar inside Twitter?

Comment from Josh Catone on 2007-11-12

2007-11-13T02:28:26Z

@Tom: For convenience... and because useful apps on the Facebook platform would be nice.

Comment from Weizong Kuang on 2007-11-12

2007-11-13T03:09:38Z

In China,few people like facebook and more people dont know it .why facebook is so popular?

Comment from Joseph Pally on 2007-11-12

2007-11-13T06:03:51Z

If you look for productivity in a social-networking site, you would not find it.

Comment from Will on 2007-11-12

2007-11-13T07:45:14Z

I can understand those guys who created this app. They thought that, if Facebook is popular their app could be popular too. But don't you think that people still use Facebook mainly for socializing, not for collaboration and project management? I mean it's not doing any good to the productivity of a team. You should keep your people concentrated on their job and on your projects. That's why I'm using Wrike.

Comment from ratty on 2007-11-13

2007-11-13T13:41:07Z

this just goes to show how cluttered and useless Facebook "apps" (spam) have become.

Comment from Ian on 2007-11-17

2007-11-17T20:28:54Z

I suggest a look at most effective online office app that I've tried which is ThinkFree and its Facebook app at:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=3460330611&ref=s