With 1.35 billion monthly users and the upper hand in online sharing and collaboration, Facebook could take on not only LinkedIn, but the entire enterprise cloud computing market.
This is according to analysts and comes after it emerged this week that the world's number one social network had quietly been testing a version of its Web site geared specifically toward the workplace. Dubbed Facebook at Work, the service will allow users to exchange messages and share documents using Facebook's scrolling news feed and other features its users are familiar with.
The professional version of Facebook - which is expected to compete with the likes of LinkedIn and has been compared to Slack.com - will allow users to maintain unique profiles that are separate from their existing Facebook profiles, according to Reuters. Work activities will not be shared on users' personal profile, and the baby photos, videos and general chit-chat popular in the original version of Facebook will not invade the professional version.
Cloud competition
BMI-TechKnowledge (BMI-T) director Brian Neilson says Facebook at Work could actually end up occupying a completely different niche to LinkedIn.
"One might say Facebook's goal is to own your online identity. If [the company] can achieve this goal, then it can monetise [the service] in many different ways, and also remain dominant. If they also own your professional identity (which LinkedIn pretty much does at present, for those who use it), how much more valuable. Then they can also branch into direct competition in enterprise cloud computing services, going head to head with Google and Microsoft's enterprise cloud solutions."
It is as yet unclear as to how Facebook plans to make money from Facebook at Work. The company currently generates most of its revenue from adverts.
World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck says, as it stands, Facebook is much more than just a traditionally social network. The wide acceptance of brand and business pages, he says, is evidence Facebook goes beyond just sharing photos and life events.
"The use of the term 'Friends' is probably inaccurate - it should be 'Contacts' or 'Connections', as that better describes most relationships on Facebook. Once one sees it in that context, Facebook suddenly becomes as powerful a networking tool as a social tool. From this point of view, a professional offering makes sense."
Goldstuck says LinkedIn may be the main competition to Facebook at Work, initially. "Others will emerge. WeChat, in particular, has the versatility to compete head on."
Neilson says, although LinkedIn is by far the largest site for professional profiling, the position Facebook seems to be taking - that of workgroup computing and document sharing - is a different niche to that currently occupied by LinkedIn. "Interestingly, Google Plus is becoming quite popular for sharing of content in a more professional context, but adoption is still very limited and hence the field is still wide open for Facebook to come in and try to 'occupy'."
As a relatively late starter in the professional cloud service arena (Facebook launched in February 2004, some nine months after LinkedIn hit the market), Facebook would have to choose a niche approach to get started, notes Neilson. In SA, Facebook has 11.8 million users, while LinkedIn has 3.8 million, according to World Wide Worx's latest social media landscape study.
"Google Drive, MS OneDrive and Dropbox have a substantial lead on the wannabe new starter. Facebook will counter this by offering integrated functionality going beyond what any of these platforms do. They may also try to beat Google Docs at its own game - could it possibly be that Facebook has something like this secretly in the works, I wonder?"
Yesterday, IBM launched a new e-mail application for businesses that integrates social media, file sharing and analytics to learn a user's behaviour and predict interactions with co-workers - a move in line with the company's shift to cloud computing and data analytics. At the same time, BT announced One Cloud Lync - a fully-managed private cloud service with enterprise telephony and video with the standard feature set of presence, instant messaging and conferencing on a single, unified platform.
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