Adverts for Microsoft Teams, Slack or even Zoom usually follow the same format; people working together from the comfort of their own homes, in corporate jobs. There’s obviously nothing inherently wrong with that, but it does target one specific type of business, rather than demonstrate the full range of use cases different organisations can take advantage of, exemplified by the rise in virtual events since the pandemic.

Away from the living room, quizzes and shows, one effect collaboration platforms have had across the business landscape is taking away some of the emphasis of email, especially from an internal perspective.

The argument for removing email for certain members of staff, and replacing it with a collaboration platform, is particularly compelling for workers in the service industry. Waiters, cleaners, and shop floor assistants have little use for a specific email address tied to their job, although will need to be contacted from time to time by their employer.

Honest Burgers is one such business that’s done away with email addresses for their staff on the restaurant floors, instead opting to use the Workplace platform from Meta. This move has allowed the brand to “streamline” communications for employees, according to the head of employer brand at Honest Burgers, Oli Cavaliero.

“We didn't have a communications platform or a central platform before using Workplace. Instead, we had thousands of emails, WhatsApp groups, and messages, as well as different systems where we would hold documents and learning material,” he says.

“Now, we don't have internal emails and everything is done through Workplace. Our entire library of resources can be found on the platform, and we have other platforms that we use connected to Workplace so everything that we do is driven through Workplace, rather than having multiple logins for different platforms.”

Necessary communications

Much has been said about the death of email, and whether there’s a role for the archaic technology in the modern era, especially one that’s saturated with communication and collaboration platforms. Despite several providers building tools intent on superseding the email inbox, such as Slack Connect and Microsoft Teams connect, no company has yet found a silver bullet in the war against email. Using Workplace, though, Honest Burgers claims it’s found a middle ground between wasting resources on unused email accounts and the necessary communications that need to be sent out.

Co-founders Tom Barton and Philip Eeles (pictured) established Honest Burgers in 2010 as a pop-up tent in Brighton

Employees need to have an understanding of the potential dangers they may encounter throughout a restaurant, from the kitchen to the table, for example. Employees, in previous years, would have had to log in to a portal they barely used, often resetting their passwords along the way, before running through mandated courses in order to simply get back to doing their jobs.

By transitioning to the collaboration platform, Honest Burgers has managed to integrate its staff training resources into chatbots that use multiple choice and free-text answers to provide a simple way to complete the course.

“At Honest, we initially used chatbots to share information to get feedback,” Cavaliero says. “From there, we’ve increased the complexity, and our systems engineer has been able to share his knowledge to the wider team, so we can create our own chatbots in our specialist areas.

“When a new member joins the team, they’re educated through chatbots. Initially, they'll be introduced to Workplace, then the chatbots guide them through the process. There are different areas that employees can train in, but the reason for us doing this is to simplify the process, rather than having a huge system with information we wouldn't necessarily need all the time.”

Boosting engagement

As with all collaboration platforms, adoption is key to its success. Being able to create chatbots, after all, isn’t useful if nobody is using Workplace. Cavaliero, however, says engagement has been high amongst its 600-strong employee base, with uptake well within the 90% range.

“Over 99% of our team are activated on Workplace, and 90% of our team log on at least ten times within a 28 day period,” he says. “That shows that employees are engaged, but we also understand that people might not want to be so engaged so we have to be absolutely fine with that.

“Our employees can just use Workplace for the tools they need. We require them to use a chatbot to fulfil the health and safety course, for example. Some may not want to go on to our culture page and look at some of the pictures from some of the celebrations that have been going on.

“That said, as we've used Workplace more and integrated more initiatives, the engagement has certainly increased. Whether it's health and safety training, a bot platform, or our own HR system called the Brain that we’ve built, it all plugs into Workplace, which allows us to be flexible as well make changes when we want to.”

Facebook is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. It’s a great way to reach customers, with a personal feel that you can’t get from a corporate website. It can provide calls to action, ads and promotions, a messaging service and a showcase for products and services, reaching up to three billion users across the platform – without them having to step outside of a familiar service.

At the same time, creating and operating a Facebook presence can bring hazards you might not be aware of. Last year, for example, a bug in Facebook’s code temporarily exposed the accounts of the admins behind Facebook business pages. Private details of the official Banksy page were posted online, as well as those of a host of global political figures. Facebook quickly fixed that bug, but incidents like this raise the question of just how private and secure your business page actually is.

First, the good news: Industry experts agree that Facebook is a net positive for businesses. “The privacy concerns that apply to individuals don’t really apply to businesses,” explains Paul Bischoff, privacy advocate at Comparitech. Unlike individual users, he argues, businesses want exposure and, for the most part, sharing more information is always better.

Natalie Howells, group head of marketing at business growth agency SpiderGroup, agrees. “Being on Facebook means people can learn about your business and buy from you right where they’re already hanging out,” she says. “The privacy issues are, naturally, a concern to business users, but they’re outweighed by the significant advantages of reaching people where they already are.”

“As long as a business is aware of the potential privacy concerns – and, of course, the privacy of their userbase,” says Steven Jupp, CEO at business intelligence outfit High Impact Office, “the benefits certainly outweigh any privacy issues.”

What could go wrong?

There’s a clear consensus: your business ought to be on Facebook. At the same time, it’s important to be aware of what the issues are, and what you’re entrusting to Facebook when starting your business page.

“There are obviously many details that Facebook will collect during sign-up and daily operation,” Jupp says. “A business is effectively signing away anything they are publishing within their page or shop. But in the light of things, they would very likely do the same on their own website.”

“Businesses don’t need to give up any information that they don’t want to when creating a page,” adds Bischoff. “And they only need to give up financial information if they want to run ads or boost posts.”

A bigger privacy concern is Facebook Messenger. “If you use Messenger to communicate with customers, Facebook can access those messages,” Bischoff points out. Facebook says that chats sent through Messenger aren’t used for advertising, but elsewhere it’s made clear that these communications aren’t private: “As with other parts of Facebook, we collect information from Messenger primarily to provide the service, improve the product experience, and keep people safe and secure.”

Then there’s the small matter of giving Facebook a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free worldwide licence to publish your content. This isn’t as dramatic as it may sound: Howells points out that the licence only applies until you remove your content. “However, removed content may still be stored in Facebook’s backup files, and this could be a deal-breaker for some businesses,” she says.

According to Camilla Winlo, director of consultancy at data protection and privacy specialists DQM GRC, privacy issues can often arise from a lack of understanding of the relevant data-protection guidelines. The ICO’s guidance on direct marketing advises businesses to collect individual contact preferences for email, SMS, post and telephone marketing, but doesn’t explicitly specify social media as a channel.

Consequently, warns Wilco, “many businesses don’t collect social media preferences, and assume they are covered by consent to marketing by email or SMS, or not necessary at all”. The ICO has issued separate guidance on social media marketing but Wilco says that, in her experience, many marketers are not aware of it and don’t comply with it.

Another question to consider is what information you might be unwittingly giving away in the course of operating your Facebook page. One potential source of data leaks is Facebook’s Business Manager tool (recently re-branded as Business Suite). As Steven Jupp explains, “the Business Suite allows a company to ‘bind’ its CRM, WhatsApp and Instagram accounts to its page”. The benefits of this are obvious, but “Facebook can see the conversations and the data stream between the page and the connected apps – and an attacker could too, as this continues with any apps that the page may bind to, or that a company may develop itself on the Facebook platform.”

Nor is it easy to audit exactly what information Facebook is holding that could be relevant to your business, as it accumulates data in two different ways. “First, it collects data in an explicit and obvious manner,” says Winlo. “For example, I might add my phone number in the relevant field in my personal profile. But secondly, it can collect data in a less obvious way. For example, a business might upload my email address and my phone number to Facebook so they can advertise to me.”

While Facebook has improved its transparency over the years, Winlo says it’s still “very difficult to truly understand what information it collects and processes, and what the risks associated with that might be”.

The situation gets even more complicated when staff connect their personal accounts to the business. “Staff cannot be required to connect their personal accounts, but they may choose to, in order to help customers to identify and connect with or locate them,” says Winlo. “This may enable Facebook to draw conclusions about the business, based on what it knows about the staff.”

Bischoff advised caution when it comes to tagging employees or customers in posts or photos, so as not to expose them to unnecessary attention. “Be sure to ask employees before tagging them,” he says.

The more the merrier

According to Paul Ducklin, principal research scientist at Sophos, for most firms with a presence on Facebook the biggest risk arises from giving too much access to too many people. “If you aren’t careful, you’ll end up with literally dozens of people, at all levels of responsibility and experience in the company, wired up to your company account 24 hours a day,” he says.

This may help to keep posts and responses lively and frequent, but it also greatly expands the potential for lapses in security or judgement. Some of these employees may be using the Facebook mobile app, which keeps you logged in all the time; others will be storing the company credentials in their browser for easy access.

“If any one of those people gets their phone stolen, has their browser hijacked, makes an honest mistake, or simply decides to post something controversial, that’s your page saying it, loud and clear, to the whole world, right there under your company brand,” Ducklin warns.

And don’t think it can’t happen to you. As Jupp warns, “Facebook is a wild west with regard to hijacking of people’s accounts – and a hijacked team member, especially of a high security rank, can cause leakages of data and other attacks on both staff and clients.” Anything at all that has been used in the Business Suite could be exposed.

Facebook cover

The first step towards protection is limiting access to your page. “Stick to people who need access for their job roles, and manage the access you give each person,” suggests Howells – which, of course, is good security sense for any online resource, not just Facebook. Similarly, “make sure that removing access to Facebook, and any other accounts, is part of your employee off-boarding process so that ex-staff members can’t continue to access the account or any private groups you have set up.”

Don’t go too far in restricting access, though: Facebook reserves the right to ban or block individual users at any time, so CyberSmart’s Jamie Akhtar recommends you create more than one administrator. In this way, “if a personal account is shut down for any reason, you have a second profile that can still access your page”.

On top of that, remember standard practices such as basic password hygiene. “Often a page manager will use the same password for both the Facebook account and the admin login on their website,” Jupp notes. “That could lead to a data leak, or the complete hijack of an associated site.”

Ducklin recommends that, before you “go corporate” on Facebook, you plan out “which apps will be granted access; which individuals will have passwords allowing them to post; what the official company rules of engagement will be, so no one has to guess; what sort of 2FA you are going to use; what privacy settings are right for your corporate account; and who’s going to be responsible for regularly reviewing the list of logged in users and authorised apps in Facebook itself.”

Ad-matching and surveillance

A big reason why businesses love Facebook is that it’s one of the best-performing options for advertisers, outperforming Google on average cost per click, cost per action and conversion rate. “From a business perspective, the benefits are clear,” says Winlo. “And from my personal perspective, Facebook advertising has led me to discover some of my favourite small brands that I would not have found otherwise.”

However, the methods it uses to so effectively match ads to customers are controversial. Facebook creates detailed profiles of users, based not only on what they do while using the site, but on their interactions with other sites too. “These profiles are created, in essence, by following you around everywhere you go and monitoring everything you do,” Winlo explains. “That’s known as ‘pervasive surveillance’, and it’s about the most privacy-intrusive thing it is possible to do.

“People have a human right to privacy, and pervasive surveillance violates that right,” Winlo adds. “In 2013, the Internet Engineering Task Force described pervasive surveillance as ‘a technical attack’ on the internet, leading to RFC 7258, which says that internet protocols should be designed to mitigate the risk of pervasive surveillance wherever possible.”

Of course, few businesses will let that stop them from taking advantage of such a powerful tool. The standard justification is that anyone who uses Facebook has implicitly accepted pervasive surveillance as the price of entry; notably, Apple’s recent changes to iOS inhibit Facebook’s ability to track individuals without their express consent.

As Winlo points out, however, privacy campaigners would argue that “Facebook’s whole approach is fundamentally unlawful, and that any advertiser choosing to make use of their platform is benefiting from the fruit of the forbidden tree.”

Facebook became the fifth US tech firm to surpass a market capitalisation of $1 trillion on Monday.

The social network joins Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google's parent company Alphabet in reaching the milestone.

The company's shares closed up 4.2% at $355.64, according to CNBC, following a legal ruling that dismissed an antitrust complaint brought by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and a coalition of 48 state attorneys general.

The case threatened to untie Facebook from its WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions because of the competitive advantage it allegedly holds over rival firms. The FTC sued the social network in December 2020, arguing that Facebook engaged in a systematic strategy to eliminate threats to its monopoly with these acquisitions. However, the Federal Court ruled that the FTC failed to prove the central argument of its case.

"Although the Court does not agree with all of Facebook's contentions here, it ultimately concurs that the agency's Complaint is legally insufficient and must therefore be dismissed," reads the filing from the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

"The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims - namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for Personal Social Networking Services."

The dismissal led to Facebook shares rising and ultimately pushed its market cap over the $1 trillion mark. The firm makes most of its revenue through targeted advertising but it is starting to reap rewards with its business segments, such as Workplace, its enterprise communications platform.

Despite finally reaching the landmark, Facebook remains far behind the likes of Amazon and Google, which are pushing the $2 trillion mark - a valuation that only Apple and Microsoft have topped, so far.

Facebook is rolling out tools for developers to create new ways for businesses to interact with customers on Instagram and WhatsApp.

The social network also unveiled the general availability of Messenger API for Instagram as part of a series of announcements at its F8 Refresh conference that aims to create more business use cases on its platforms.

Facebook has been gradually building out an extensive commercial infrastructure around its social media, WhatsApp, and Instagram users. This was initially its advertising models, but that has extended into marketing, customer services, commerce, and also workplace productivity.

The company is hoping to support more types of messaging on WhatsApp, which will include a business alert for when items are back in stock and a separate way for people to opt into messaging with businesses through a new 'Login Connect' feature.

"Our vision is for messaging to be the primary way people and businesses communicate," the company said in a blog post. "Making it is as convenient, unobtrusive and personalised as possible, using the same familiar apps and features used to communicate with family and friends today."

F8 was originally a hackathon that evolved into a bigger event over time, however, the last two installments have been virtual due to the pandemic. No big products or hardware announcements have featured but developer updates have taken prominence with business-oriented developer tools paving the way for the firm to bolsters its commercial strategy on both WhatsApp and Instagram.

Facebook also announced a new app builder, called "Business Apps", that developers can access from its Business Suite - this was launched last year as a single hub for businesses to manage activity across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.

WhatsApp has said that a controversial change to its privacy terms that would see the creation of a limited data sharing agreement with its parent company Facebook will now going ahead as planned.

The update to WhatsApp’s privacy policy, which would allow the messaging platform to share some user data with Facebook, was supposed to come into effect on 8 February. However, public backlash prompted WhatsApp to delay the implementation by three months, to 15 May, in order to clarify the details of what the agreement would entail.

Under the new privacy policy, WhatsApp will be able to share limited user data with Facebook and its group firms in order to allow businesses to use the platform for customer service purposes.

However, the company said that this would not affect users' personal conversations and that it will be up to the user to decide whether they "want to engage with businesses, or not", according to a blog post on Thursday. It also added that it will "clearly label chats" in order to make users aware when businesses are managing their conversations using Facebook, and the implementation of the update will first result in the displaying of banners providing additional information on the new terms.

Accepting the new terms will be compulsory in order to continue using the messaging platform, a rule that last month led to millions of users downloading alternative apps such as Telegram and Signal.

As a result. WhatsApp fell from being the eighth most downloaded app in the UK at the start of the year, to the 23rd most downloaded by 12 January, when discussion around the update started gaining momentum.

By contrast, Telegram and Signal gained 25 million and 7.5 million users respectively during the same period, resulting in a brief crash of Signal's servers. However, it's unclear how many of these users still have WhatsApp installed, so it's difficult to assess how many users WhatsApp lost entirely as a result of the move.

WhatsApp acknowledged that it “could have done better” and told users that it will be “doing much more to make [its] voice clear going forward” by using its app’s Status feature to share information on updates and company values directly to its users.

It also addressed the mass uptake in Signal and Telegram downloads, saying that it understands that “some people may check out other apps to see what they have to offer”.

“We’ve seen some of our competitors try to get away with claiming they can’t see people’s messages - if an app doesn’t offer end-to-end encryption by default that means they can read your messages," the company stated in its blog post. "Other apps say they’re better because they know even less information than WhatsApp. We believe people are looking for apps to be both reliable and safe, even if that requires WhatsApp having some limited data.

"We strive to be thoughtful on the decisions we make and we’ll continue to develop new ways of meeting these responsibilities with less information, not more,” it added.

BT has rolled out Facebook Workplace to enable enterprise-wide internal communications for 80,000 employees, as businesses put emphasis on new ways of interaction due to lockdown restrictions.

The telecoms giant told IT Pro that it previously used various social networking platforms, including Microsoft's Yammer, before deciding to unify and simplify its communications channels. It started the deployment of Workplace in July 2019.

Facebook Workplace, which was launched in 2016, now connects 80% of BT employees through chats, Groups, and video across all parts of the organisation in 54 countries.

The B2B communications platform is being used to connect BT employees, including external employees at Openreach and engineers, enabling them to stay informed while working in the field.

BT’s director of Internal Communications Helen Willett said that “Workplace was a simple choice for BT”, describing it as “mobile-friendly, easy to use and intuitive”.

“But more than that, it’s culture-enhancing. Leaders can talk to their teams in a matter of seconds and the peer-to-peer benefits include enabling a sense of belonging, instant access to news and a way to solve problems collaboratively.

"Perhaps most importantly, having Workplace has made it so much easier for us to stick to our principle of ‘inside out’ - letting our colleagues know what’s happening, increasing trust and, in turn, advocacy. Sometimes we have a matter of minutes to reach our people - Workplace allows us to do that, and to do it well,” she added.

So far, BT has seen an avalanche of involvement from its employees, with three million reactions and a further 970,000 comments on Workplace.

BT CEO Philip Jansen said that the platform is allowing the company to aim for a “fast-paced, inclusive and empowering” future.

“We’ve seen many benefits including being able to share news instantly, gather feedback on subjects that our people care about, and enabling more authentic leadership communications,” he said, adding that the platform has also “strengthened” the company’s communities across BT and Openreach.

“Through Workplace, colleagues connect with each other on the things that matter, sharing ideas and problem-solving together in real time. That is hugely beneficial to our colleagues and customers, and therefore to BT as a whole."

Facebook Messenger has become a communication tool for the masses. From personal chats to business communications, seemingly everyone uses it daily. This results in a lot of sensitive and personal information getting shared on it, and with Messenger now on our phones, this makes letting someone borrow your phone a risky proposition, until today.

Today, Facebook has added an extra layer of protection by adding a lock specifically for the Messenger app. Dubbed App Lock, this new feature locks your Messenger and allows noone to access it until you use either your touch or face ID to unlock it separately from your phone. What’s more, this system uses the IDs already stored in your phone and doesn’t transmit them to Facebook.

App Lock is currently available on iPhone and iPad devices only, but Facebook expects to roll it out to Android devices in a few months.

Before App Lock, once you unlocked your phone to let someone else use it, they had full access to your private messages. If that person took to snooping through your messages, it could expose you or your business to a number of risks. With App Lock, this is no longer an issue.

Sure, it’s an extra step each time you unlock your phone to check your messages, but it’s well worth the security.

You can activate App Lock by opening your Messenger app, clicking on your avatar on the top-left corner, clicking “Privacy” under the “Preferences” section and toggling App Lock to the “On” position.

With App Lock activated, you can feel confident your messages are secure when letting a friend, family member, coworker or stranger borrow your phone.

Facebook will follow a string of other tech companies in embracing permanent remote working once the coronavirus pandemic has subsided as part of a new ten-year plan.

Around half of the social networking giant’s workforce will perform their roles outside of Facebook offices within ten years, the CEO has revealed in a weekly Q&A with employees, also live-streamed publicly.

The plan, which involves “aggressively opening up remote hiring”, may also lead to reductions in pay if people are employed in regions that are less expensive to live in, specifically those areas outside of Silicon Valley. This will be coupled with a measured approach to open up permanent remote working for existing employees.

“It’s clear COVID has changed a lot about our lives, and that certainly includes the way most of us work,” he said, adding 95% of Facebook’s current 50,000-strong workforce are performing their duties remotely.

“I think it’s really important to take a long-term approach to how we think about remote work because this is fundamentally about changing our culture in the way that we are all going to work long-term. So, I’m optimistic about this direction, but I want to make sure that we move forward in a measured way.”

Facebook expects that, with social distancing measures in place when offices reopen, the company can only support 25% density and capacity in its workspaces. It also believes that there’s little point constraining hiring to only those who can go into offices when many existing workers won’t be able to do so.

Zuckerberg also thinks COVID-19 will be “with us” for some time to come, with the precise details around Facebook’s long-term remote working plans to be kept in a state of flux. How the plan is implemented will change depending on how society fights the virus.

Staff had already been extended the option to continue working remotely throughout the summer, while company executives have decided to cancel all planned events of 50 or more people up to July 2021.

The company follows in the footsteps of Twitter, which told employees they can choose to work from home forever if they wish, even once the worst of the pandemic has passed. This is also true for Square, which announced this week it’s given its employees the flexibility to work “where they feel most creative and productive”.

OpenText, meanwhile, announced at the beginning of this month it would close half its offices for permanent remote working, as part of a wider restructuring programme.

Facebook’s plans to shift its own workers to permanent remote working comes amid the introduction of a slew of new features for its Microsoft Teams and Slack rival, Workplace.

The social network’s enterprise collaboration platform has been updated with tools to better support video conferencing, as well as announcing the general availability of Oculus for Business to support large scale VR deployments.

Facebook has launched its first standalone Messenger desktop app for macOS and Windows devices.

Facebook’s all-new desktop app gives users the look and feel of a native desktop app, while serving up all of the features you'd expect from Messenger including unlimited free video and group calls, GIF support and real-time notifications. It can also sync calls across multiple devices and comes equipped with a built-in dark mode.

“Now more than ever, people are using technology to stay in touch with the people they care about, even when physically apart,” said Stan Chudnovsky, VP of Messenger.

“Over the past month, we saw more than a 100% increase in people using their desktop browser for audio and video calling on Messenger. Now with apps for macOS and Windows, the best of Messenger is coming to desktop, including unlimited and free group video calls.” Chudnovsky continued.

“We're all looking for more ways to be together even while we're physically apart,” shared Mark Zuckerburg, CEO of Facebook, in a recent Facebook status. “Group video calls and messages on our apps have surged -- Messenger use on desktop has more than doubled in the last month. These new native apps will make the experience a lot better.”

Facebook’s announcement comes as the social networking conglomerate looks to compete with Google Hangouts and Zoom. While Zoom has experienced a surge in its user base in light of the coronavirus pandemic, the teleconference service has also faced a myriad of privacy issues.

The launch of a standalone desktop app for Messenger has been a long time coming. Facebook hinted it had been working toward launching a desktop app for Messenger as early as 2016. Then, during Facebook’s 2019 F8, the company announced its users could expect a Facebook Messenger desktop app within the year. That time has finally come.

For those ready to give the Facebook Messenger for desktop app a go, it is available to download for free from the Microsoft Store and the Mac App Store.

Facebook is offering small and medium-sized businesses cash grants worth a total of $100 million (£81.5 million), in addition to a package of measures to help them survive the effects of COVID-19.

The company’s small business grants programme will see $40 million (£32.6 million) in cash distributed to 10,000 US businesses, in collaboration with third-party partner Ureeka.

The distribution of these cash grants will begin with businesses based across 34 locations in which the company's US employees currently live and work.

The remaining funds will be available for businesses across 29 other countries in which Facebook operates, with further details about the scheme coming soon.

Facebook has also begun rolling out a gift cards scheme for businesses to distribute digitally through their page on the social media platform.

People can find an option to support local businesses with digital gift cards in their News Feed, with the social network also planning to bring this function to Instagram.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has hit small businesses everywhere,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. “Suddenly and, through no fault of their own, many simply can’t do business, and for others it has become much, much harder because customers are doing the right thing and staying at home.”

“In this challenging time, when information is changing daily, we are listening to and learning from scores of small businesses to understand what they need now and what they will need down the road.”

These measures are in addition to new fundraising mechanics for businesses on Facebook, as well as the capacity to add information about temporary service changes, so any disruption or resumption of normal service are beamed to users as announcements.

The company joins a host of other tech giants looking to support hundreds of thousands of smaller businesses struggling under the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

A stream of companies have offered free software licenses and extended trials in areas ranging from cyber security to remote working and collaboration, including industry giants like Kaspersky, Oracle, and Microsoft.

In a complete break from its policies of the past, Facebook has also moved to remove disinformation and fake news related to COVID-19 from its platform in a far more aggressive way than many may have anticipated.

How often do you use Facebook? For many people, Facebook is part of their daily routine. They pick up their phone or open their laptop and go straight to Facebook to learn more about what’s going on in the world around them. In fact, Facebook has ingrained itself into our lives so effortlessly that it’s the most visited website in the world, according to Hootsuite.

Further consider that the average Facebook user spends around 19.5 hours on the platform each month, according to the research. What's more, having a Facebook business page can become a powerful tool for customer acquisition.

Why your business needs a Facebook page

With more than two billion monthly active users and Facebook clicks on searches for local businesses increased 23% from February to May, 2020, the reasons for having a Facebook page for your business are almost endless. From connecting with your business’ target market to determining the most effective ad strategy for selling your product or service to your consumers, your business can’t really afford to be without a Facebook page.

Understanding Facebook’s arsenal of tools for businesses

Facebook offers a wealth of tools for business owners. Each tool focuses on providing businesses with the opportunity to reach their target audiences and engage with their customers while solidifying their overall presence across the platform.

Business Manager

Business Manager brings together all of a business’ team members, pages and ad accounts. This puts all this into an easy-to-access and secure place. Plus, Business Manager is free to use.

Ads Manager

Ads Manager provides you with the tools you need to manage and determine the success of your Facebook page’s ad campaigns. When using Ads Manager, you can also access useful campaign tools such as audience insights.

Page Insights

Never underestimate the power of analytics. Facebook certainly hasn’t.

Page Insights serves as a valuable analytics tool for Facebook business users. Not only do insights allow you to keep up to date on comments, but it also provides valuable data, including your content’s reach and the types of posts and content your followers respond to the most.

Messenger

Your customers crave connection. Facebook Messenger gives them just that. Over 20 billion messages are exchanged between businesses and users monthly on Facebook Messenger and the platform even has over 300,000 active bots on Messenger.

Facebook Pixel

Facebook pixel is a piece of code that works in concert with your business’ website and Facebook page. When a customer takes action on your website after visiting its Facebook page, Facebook pixel reports this action to your account.

The more conversions Facebook pixel tracks, the better it is at delivering ads to your target audience.

Marketing your business using Facebook

Facebook has over 2.74 billion active users. An increasing number of those users visit the social networking site hoping to connect with useful products, services, and brands.

In 2020, an estimated 87.1% of U.S. marketers used Facebook marketing to reach their customers. Fortunately, Facebook offers plenty of opportunities for businesses to reach their target audiences using strategically designed Facebook ads.

Local awareness ads

For brick-and-mortar businesses, local awareness ads are key. Simply choose the proximity you’d like to reach around your business and the target audience you want to reach, and Facebook will target those people.

You can also send people straight to your front door, by adding a ‘Get Directions’ button to this ad.

Slide show ads

These are quick and easy video-like ads using marketing collateral you may already have. Unlike most video ads, slide show ads are affordable and take only minutes to create.

Carousel ads

With a carousel ad, you can give your customers the information they need by showcasing multiple products and services in a single post. If your marketing team’s goal is to showcase a product effectively or highlight a one-of-a-kind service, consider using a carousel ad.

Dynamic ads

To launch a dynamic ad on Facebook, you must have not only a Facebook business page but also a Business Manager account and a Facebook pixel. Dynamic ads allow you to promote products to those who may have browsed your website when they migrate to Facebook, encouraging them to revisit your website and become a paying customer.

Lead ads

In need of a solid email list so you can reach out to your customer’s on additional platforms? Use a lead ad to create contact forms that are pre-populated with a user’s contact information. Gather this information and continue to build connections with your customer base.

Canvas ads

Full-screen, instant-loading mobile ads are known as canvas ads. Think of them as an artificial landing page for your organization.

These ads aren’t only highly engaging, but they are great for segments of your audience that visit Facebook regularly and also consume a large amount of content while using the platform.

Keep your customers engaged using Facebook

Although the social media ecosystem is one that is constantly changing, there is one thing that remains the same: It takes a substantial amount of time and effort to transform your Facebook business page into a completely developed online community.

At the end of the day, however, ensuring you keep your customers engaged through a Facebook business page can make a huge difference.

Customize your audience

From lookalike audiences that aid organisations to discover more customers, to custom audiences that specifically target those customers you already know of, Facebook provides no shortage of opportunities to customize your business page’s audience and constantly engage with your customer base.

Create a community of super fans

If you are talented at real-time communication with your customers, it may be worthwhile considering having a Facebook group associated with your organization’s page. This could be your chance to create a powerful community of super fans, as more than one billion people use Facebook groups regularly, providing your customers with a chance to talk to each other and interact with the brand itself.

Focus on quality

Social media moves pretty fast, as Ferris Bueller might attest, so if your brand isn’t able to constantly publish eye-catching content or ads, your customers won’t stop and look. Furthermore, when it comes to platforms like Facebook, there’s no time for sub-par content. You’re more likely to keep your core customer base engaged if you put out higher quality content as consistently as possible. Obviously, the more engaged your customer base is, the better your business will be.

Facebook is redesigning Pages for small businesses in an attempt to revitalise an aspect of its platform that has become strangled with oversaturation and algorithmic tweaks to the news feed.

Pages will increasingly serve as platforms for consumers to meaningfully interact with small businesses, by making reservations or booking appointments for example, against serving merely as marketing tools which organisations use to compete for news feed exposure.

As part of the wave of changes, user recommendations will be given more prominence, and ticketed events will allow organisers to sell tickets directly from Facebook Events. The tech giant's job application tool is also being expanded worldwide to help businesses more effectively advertise for employees.

"Local communities are built, grown and sustained by people," said Facebook's vice president of local Alex Himel. "People like your neighbors, your friends and your favorite local business owners. On Facebook, there are more than 80 million small businesses using our free business tools."

Facebook's recently-rolled out Stories feature, akin to that offered by Instagram, will be expanded to businesses so Page-owners can post their own Snapchat-like update for their users and engage with customers.

Also introduced as part of the revamp are a host of 'action buttons' that can allow Facebook users to perform actions beyond just sending a message - such as booking a service with the business.

"These improvements are a small part of our commitment to help businesses connect with customers," the company added on its Facebook Business site. "We'll continue to work on new ways to make these connections easier and more valuable to help all businesses grow."

Revitalising pages for small businesses is a much-needed endeavour given the combination of oversaturation, and changes to Facebook's news feed earlier this year that prioritised person-to-person interactions over person-to-brand interactions.

According to research by Social@Ogilvy, as reported in the Philadelphia Business Journal, organic post reach for pages with 500,000 or more followers may be as low as two percent - while it could be even lower for smaller pages.

Image: Shutterstock

Facebook is getting a bit desperate for attention "thirsty", as the internet informs me the kids say, probably while on Snapchat. Figures from eMarketer predict that the number of people under 24 using the site will slide by 700,000 in the UK alone this year; those numbers will be mostly replaced by the over-45 crowd, like a bar that's replaced its drum-and-bass club nights with 80s singalongs.

It's no wonder Facebook is starting to fade. Over the past year, it's been criticised for helping spread fake news contributing to the rise of the alt-right, the Brexit referendum result and Trump's election accused of harming our mental health, and most recently had its data sharing practices laid bare in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Wired magazine ran a cover of Zuckerberg Photoshopped to look beaten up, for a feature detailing the social network's "hellish two years".

Zuckerberg himself reacted by revamping the newsfeed algorithm to boost "meaningful social interactions", ditching brand updates and media headlines in favour of pictures and posts from your friends and family.

That's not all. Reports suggest that Facebook has started showing some users a poll asking if they agree the site is "good for the world". And users report that Facebook has started spamming them about posts from friends even sending text messages to the phone number registered for two-factor authentication. Thirsty indeed.

Every time I log in to Facebook which out of habit is nigh-on daily I see the same posts as the day before. There's never anything new. And what is posted comes from high-school friends, distant relations and long-forgotten acquaintances.

That's boring for me and a problem for Facebook. The social network taught us all about the power of the network effect, the idea that the more people are using something, the bigger draw it has. If everyone you know is on Facebook, you'll sign up. That's why I did back in 2007 and why, once everyone else signed up, I stayed on for fear of missing a message or an invitation from a friend.

That soon faded, as many friends withstood the draw of social networking, meaning plans still needed to be made over email. But, as a Canadian in London, it sure was lovely to have an entire website dedicated to photos of the friends and family I missed. Most of them don't post on Facebook any more, either.

Instead, I follow my family and friends via Instagram, or they send me photos and updates directly over WhatsApp. No wonder then that Facebook shelled out $1 billion and $19 billion for each respectively.

That may sound like quite the pile of cash when the company is allegedly sliding into irrelevance, but it made $40 billion in revenue last year, despite the disappearance of its younger audience. And those apps have proven worth their price: more and more of my friends are piling onto Instagram, and even my parents have joined WhatsApp now although they're in the over-55 contingent, so maybe that's not quite what Zuckerberg wants to hear.

But what's fascinating is watching the network effect in reverse. Facebook seemed unstoppable as it hoovered up a third of the population of the world over the course of 14 years. But it's clearly not. As Myspace discovered, the network effect is powerful, but it's all about momentum and Facebook has lost that.

A friend recently asked me in person, not over Facebook whether I thought the site would survive the decade. I think it will, especially with the over-55 set propping it up. And the company itself likely has many years left, thanks in part to smart investments such as Instagram and WhatsApp.

But it's a serious reminder to other Silicon Valley giants that there's no such thing as "too big to fail". We might not be able to remember a world without Google, Facebook, Twitter and the rest but that world is only a few years in the past, and may return a few years in the future, too.

Image: Shutterstock

Facebook is testing a new downvote' that will allow users to hide comments and provide feedback regarding them.

The social network giant confirmed the news to TechCrunch but insisted this feature would not be the dislike' button that has been widely requested.

The feature will work by hiding selected comments and then flagging the post as either offensive', misleading' or off-putting'.

The downvote' will be part of a package of measures designed at improving the Facebook community.

The company said: "We are exploring a feature for people to give us feedback about comments on public page posts."

Facebook confirmed that this test would be confined initially to a small set of people in the US.

Social media sites have recently faced a storm of criticism for their lax approach in dealing with abusive or misinforming content that have been flagged up. Twitter in particular, has been much criticised for failing to deal with this.

Facebook has often acknowledged its complicity with active steps taken to ensure that the spread of fake news a contributing factor in swaying the 2016 US presidential election and cyber bullying will not be tolerated.

The company also announced it was doubling the number of engineers it employs in London to pioneer solutions for the issues the company faces.

"Whether it's scamming, bullying, harassment or false news, they will work with experts to understand the issue, identify the pattern and build a solution," said Facebook's Chris Cox.

Though refusing to divulge how many additional engineers were being hired, Facebook regarded the move as necessary to "remove bad content from the platform".

Facebook today revealed plans to open a new London office at Rathbone Place in central London, hiring 800 new staff, despite the uncertain implications of Brexit on access to talent and funding.

It will be the company's biggest engineering hub outside of the US and will bring the total number of Facebook UK workers to 2,300 people.

Rathbone Place, designed by Frank Gehry, will house engineers, developers, marketing and sales staff over seven floors when it opens as Facebook's London office in 2018.

Chancellor Philip Hammond said: "I want to congratulate Facebook on the opening of their new London office. The UK is not only the best place to start a new business, it's also the best place to grow one.

"It's a sign of confidence in our country that innovative companies like Facebook invest here, and it's terrific news that they will be hiring 800 more highly skilled workers next year."

The new offices will also be home to Facebook's first in-house startup incubator, called LDN_LAB, where startups will be able to take part in a three-month programme to propel their development. They will benefit from office space, expert training, mentorship and networking opportunities.

The programme officially opens in February and is currently accepting applications from startups that are using technology to build communities and bring people together. Applications close on 3 January and startups that apply also need to be based in the UK, founded in the last three years and have teams of up to 50 people.

Nicola Mendelsohn, VP of Facebook EMEA, said: "We're delighted to be opening our new UK office today, announcing the creation of 800 new jobs and launching LDN_LAB, a dedicated development space for UK startups. Today's announcements show that Facebook is more committed than ever to the UK and in supporting the growth of the country's innovative startups."

Mendelsohn pointed to the UK's entrepreneurial ecosystem and reputation for its engineering excellence as a reason as to why Facebook chose the UK for its new office. She added: "This country has been a huge part of Facebook's story over the past decade, and I look forward to continuing our work to achieve our mission of bringing the world closer together".

Julian David, CEO at techUK said: "It is great to see a world-leading company like Facebook continuing to invest in London's renowned tech ecosystem, despite the uncertainties surrounding Brexit. Facebook has chosen to be amongst like-minded businesses and the brightest minds in placing its very first in-house start-up incubator, LDN_LAB, in the UK. Large businesses are key to supporting innovation and we are excited to see what becomes of the start-ups that can grow and scale as a result of this endeavour. The message is clear: London is open, and tech is the flag bearer."

During its ten years in London Facebook has created a number of products including Workplace, which over 30,000 businesses use, and the Oculus Rift VR headset.

Image source: Ben Lister, PA Wire

More than 30,000 organisations have signed up to the Facebook's Workplace collaboration tool since its launch last year, the company has revealed, more than double the number announced just six months ago.

Coinciding with the news, and to celebrate the app's one year anniversary, Facebook has also announced the release of a Workplace desktop app for group chats, which will eventually support video calls in an update due to land in the coming weeks.

Facebook's answer to highly successful collaboration applications such as Slack, Atlassian and a host of smaller tools, was first revealed in October 2016, and has since taken a sizeable chunk of the market, despite it's relatively late arrival. Although it's some way off rivaling the biggest names in the industry, such as Slack with its 4 million daily users, it's an impressive accomplishment for a new collaboration app.

Alongside some new features, such as screen sharing and the upcoming group video chat support for up to 50 people per conference call, Facebook has also given its existing mobile app a new coat of paint, simplifying its UI to give it a consistent look across desktop and mobile.

"This past year, we shipped new features to help companies better work together: multi-company groups, live video chat, group analytics and more," said Julien Codorniou, VP of Facebook Workplace, in a blog post. "Increasingly, we've found that many customers rely on messaging for real-time, reliable communication.

"Messaging has always been a key component of the Workplace experience. But we wanted to make it even easier for people to work together in real-time, both on the go and at their desks."

The new desktop version of the chat app, which was already available to mobile users, includes file sharing and screen sharing, both of which will prove immensely useful to business users. Message reactions, @mentions, and gifs, which will be familiar to Slack users, are also included.

There were concerns that Facebook Workplace would be a difficult sell. Companies have struggled to distance their employees from personal social media use, and some voices suggested that the application would too closely resemble its parent platform.

However, customers have clearly resonated with its familiar feel and the fact that it looks and feels almost identical to the consumer Facebook app, with the company banking on users being able to pick it up almost immediately.

Both Facebook and Microsoft are considered the newest players in the collaboration market, despite dwarfing rival companies in terms of size. Microsoft Teams is now bundled as part of Office 365, granting it access to a user base of over 85 million, although it's unclear exactly how many customers are using the app.

The Facebook Workplace app is available immediately for Windows and Mac, as well as iOS and Android.

Images courtesy of Facebook

Slack's business focused platform has now been unveiled as 'Slack Enterprise Grid', which promises to add more features for managing the app at a larger scale.

The new platform will allow users to operate across unlimited workspaces and shared channels, while managers will be able to handle user accounts, groups and direct messaging across the entire organisation.

"With Enterprise Grid, Slack has preserved the sense of community, interactivity, and humanity of the workspace that our teams love, with the administrative capabilities we need as a larger enterprise," said Jennifer Manry, VP of Workforce Technology at Capital One.

The basic experience will remain the same, but will include some added functionality to make navigation easier. Instead of multiple teams using separate instances of the app, users inside large organisations will now be able to sign into a single layer to access every discoverable workspace or channel.

Security has also been beefed up, with new interfaces for the management of tools at the 'Grid' level, including data loss prevention and identity monitoring to keep track of who is accessing channels.

Administrators will also now be able to manage and control permissions on a per-workspace basis, including the allocation of integrations.

A new set of search, learning and intelligence (SLI) features are to be added to the package to deal with information overload, including a smarter search engine and the ability to highlight important messages across different channels.

A partnership has also been signed off with German software multinational SAP, which will provide a suite of new bot integrations for its 345,000 enterprise customers.

The exact price for the Slack Enterprise Grid package has not been disclosed, and those interested in the product have been asked to contact the company directly. Businesses not already using Slack will also have to sign up to the service separately.

30/01/2017: Start-up success story Slack will unveil a long-awaited enterprise edition of its popular collaboration platform, promising a range of business-focused features and security tools catered for IT departments.

The "Slack for Enterprise" version will be revealed at an event in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to a report from Business Insider. Slack, which already has an impressive customer base and is valued at $3.8 billion, is set to challenge the likes of Microsoft Teams and Facebook Workplace in the race to become the leading business collaboration application.

Pricing structures are still to be announced, but it is likely there will be multiple options available to customers. The current pricing format offers a free version with limited functionality, and two paid for tiers at $6.67 and $12.50 per person per month.

Slack has proven popular among businesses with its user friendly UI

Slack for Enterprise promises a range of features, including the previously announced "federation" which will make it easier for multiple teams to have their own custom installations of Slack, while still being able to talk to other co-workers on other versions.

Slack's enterprise edition has been a long time coming, with the company initially planning for a 2015 release. However the San Francisco-based company has found success in small to medium businesses, and recently hit a milestone of 4 million daily users, churning over $100 million in annual revenue. Nearly half of all Slack users are outside the US, in countries including the UK, Japan and Germany, while some of its largest business customers include LinkedIn, eBay, Conde Nast and EA.

The new business focused service will also bring a reworked secure API, featuring improved compatibility and integration options for other common workplace applications, and improved security and analytics tools for IT departments.

Despite enjoying a significant user base already, Slack has strong competition ahead from Office 365's Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business, which are set to outpace all other collaboration apps on the market in terms of adoption, according to a recent Spiceworks survey.

IT Pro approached Slack for more details but declined to comment pending the announcement.

Image courtesy of Slack

Facebook has launched its business-centric social network offshoot, allowing organisations to introduce a private collaboration platform for employees.

Facebook at Work, known simply as 'Work' allows administrators to integrate the platform with current work tools so employees can use the familiar social network environment via Android or iOS smartphones, in addition to a desktop experience.

Employees can choose to link their Work account with their personal ones so everything can be managed in one place rather than having to switch browsers to stay logged into both.

Lars Rasmussen, the engineering director at Facebook told Techcrunch: "Facebook at Work's strength is that we've spent ten years and incorporated feedback from 1 billion active users. All of that is embedded now in the same product but adapted for different use cases."

Work is aimed at businesses with more than 100 employees, so if you're a small business, you may want to look at alternatives. Document editing isn't available from within the app yet, but users can share files with colleagues and more APIs will be released in future to improve integration with the service.

"The set of features are identical to personal Facebook, but just to get it out sooner we've disabled the Platform so the APIs that third parties work with are not there, but we are keen to turn it back on. Hopefully in the future other enterprise tools will integrate with Facebook at Work," Rasmussen said.

Additionally, Facebook hasn't announced how the app will be priced, or whether it will be free and monetised via advertising like its consumer counterpart.

The service will go head to head with other popular collaboration and social networking platforms designed for businesses including Yammer, Convo, Socialcast and Slack, but Work is currently undergoing testing with some companies, meaning you may have to use an alternative until it comes out of beta.