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Microsoft Social Networks

Microsoft is Launching a Facebook Rip-off Inside Teams (theverge.com) 112

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Exactly 10 years ago today, Microsoft completed its $1.2 billion purchase of Yammer, an enterprise-focused social networking platform. Despite a big Yammer overhaul in 2019, Microsoft has been increasingly focused on Teams and its new Viva platform as the hubs of communication in workplaces. Microsoft is now launching Viva Engage today, a new Facebook-like app inside Teams that encourages social networking at work.

Viva Engage builds on some of the strengths of Yammer, promoting digital communities, conversations, and self-expression in the workplace. While Yammer often feels like an extension of SharePoint and Office, Viva Engage looks like a Facebook replica. It includes a storylines section, which is effectively your Facebook news feed, featuring conversational posts, videos, images, and more. It looks and feels just like Facebook, and it's clearly designed to feel similar so employees will use it to share news or even personal interests.
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Microsoft is Launching a Facebook Rip-off Inside Teams More

Microsoft is Launching a Facebook Rip-off Inside Teams

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  • Teams just got worse? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @01:04PM (#62716396) Homepage

    It's hard to believe that Teams could actually get any worse but damn, they managed it.

    (It only cost them $1.2 billion and ten years of work, too!)

    • Re: Teams just got worse? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @01:12PM (#62716424) Homepage Journal

      We have yammer at work and most of us calls it spammer because it just pushes useless and uninteresting stuff from departments we have no use for in our daily work.

      • We have yammer at work and most of us calls it spammer because it just pushes useless and uninteresting stuff from departments we have no use for in our daily work.

        Like (usually poorly-run) daily scrum meetings... :-)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

          Not at my workplace - it's even worse than scrum meetings.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Anonymous Coward

            > it's even worse than scrum meetings.

            Anal rape?
            Water boarding? ...

            What is worse than scrum meetings?

      • Re: Teams just got worse? (Score:4, Informative)

        by bhcompy ( 1877290 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @02:19PM (#62716636)
        For the most part it's something that the big wigs want when they buy this kind of software. Salesforce pushes this shit too. Marketing types eat this shit up because it gives them streams to make themselves feel useful internally
      • So it is like Slack but with a FB interface. Pardon me while I kill myself

        • Yes, title should read Microsoft Including Facebook Rip-off in Their Slack Rip-off.

        • So it is like Slack but with a FB interface.

          Pardon me while I kill myself

          No, don't do that it's not worth it! There's so much to live for.

          Like adding yourself to my Microsoft(r) Teams(c) Yammer(c) account!

      • Yammer, the work jammer.

      • it just pushes useless and uninteresting stuff from departments we have no use for in our daily work.

        Oh I'm so envious of you. For us Yammer is used for (well 99% useless shit also) important information regarding changes in work policy.

        I've lost count the number of times we've had a conversation like:
        Boss: "Did you book your upcoming trip in the new travel approval system x?"
        Me: "WTF is x?"
        Boss: "The new mandatory travel approval system, did you not see the Yammer post?"

        Worse still I recently opened a HR ticket due to a missing payment. After the stupid HR bot forwarded the ticket to a person I got the re

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

      Microsoft is way to hungry for what they are capable of. Why not make teams a usable product before rushing any more crap on top of it?

      They still have to this day to release a viable instant messaging platform, like Slack for example. But no, with their half-assed butt-ugly IM that is included in Teams (with is admittedly an order of magnitude better than Lync ever was) they feel the space is secured and move on to add more half implemented features to it. They can get away with it because it's "free" when

      • Microsoft is way to hungry for what they are capable of. Why not make teams a usable product before rushing any more crap on top of it?

        I'm not sure why they even call it "Teams" (plural), "Team" is a much more accurate name.

        I can't wait for Yet Another Client to proudly tell me they've added me to their team ("so we're always in touch!").

        But hey, we can now post "conversational posts, videos, images, and more" when we're at work!

        Is the "Teams" department where they send all the idiots who only got a job at Microsoft because they're related to somebody in upper management?

        • This sounds an awful lot like a system used to encourage people to engage in social activity, but have a Microsoft Group Policy twist on it where the conversations are filtered and organized so some person in the company can waste their CxO pay/time to look through it all for stuff that's "not work related". Oh, and get a bonus every time someone is dismissed from their Team(c) and running for unemployment. /humor..kind of.

      • Re:Teams just got worse? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by saider ( 177166 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @03:26PM (#62716844)

        they feel the space is secured and move on to add more half implemented features to it.

        You just described the Microsoft Enterprise business model.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        What gets me is that they must use Slack themselves, and must hate it as much as we do. But the same goes for Outlook and Windows, and yet their UIs rarely improve. In fact they often get worse.

        I guess the corporate structure makes it impossible to fix.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nomadic ( 141991 )

      This view is weird to me because after decades of terrible user interfaces I found Teams to be really good for work. Everything else MS has is terrible and counterintuitive from a UX design standpoint but Teams is fine.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        The interface is OK but it could be a lot better. For instance there are multiple search boxes for different things, sometimes on the same screen. If you are a member of a large number of teams, your team list is basically in the order you were added to them. You can manually sort them one at a time by dragging them up or down, but you can't just sort alphabetically, or by activity, etc. Finding anything can be painful, not because you can't search, but the way it presents the results. I often find myself g
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • With all the FOSS alternatives I'm not sure why MS is trying this, their UI is craptacular, and their functionality is always behind the curve as well. Yet enterprises still sign up for it because it's a "supported product" and "enterprise-grade"

      Humbug!

      • With all the FOSS alternatives I'm not sure why MS is trying this, their UI is craptacular, and their functionality is always behind the curve as well. Yet enterprises still sign up for it because it's a "supported product" and "enterprise-grade"

        Humbug!

        With that Enterprise Product, audits and belt analysis will be much smoother and easier to copy/paste from existing ones than going with some foreign FOSS thing that [they] have never seen before; something that would take days and days to do real security analysis and performance testing on. *group gasp* DO WORK? Understand something new? Where will we have the time to go on long lunch breaks with our Team(r)?

        Sorry, just writing a commercial in reverse logic. Works every time. /heh

    • It's hard to believe that Teams could actually get any worse but damn, they managed it.

      ...

      Wow, this is really bringing back memories from about around 20 years ago (I'm tempted to look at the /. archives now) about Microsoft and anything Windows, and in it. I'm not knocking on your statement at all. I'm being literally 100% honest about what entered my head when I read it.

  • Social Media at work is a bad idea (Score:4, Informative)

    by akw0088 ( 7073305 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @01:06PM (#62716406)
    Why would anyone post to a work social media, which is the opposite of what you should be doing. I can just imagine the next raise evaluation combing through your social media posts. Sorry sir, you've been demoted as you have expressed opinions

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why would anyone post to a work social media, which is the opposite of what you should be doing.

      Social media posting ... at work ... on an app run by your employer. What could POSSIBLY go wrong??

      • Why would anyone post to a work social media, which is the opposite of what you should be doing.

        Social media posting ... at work ... on an app run by your employer. What could POSSIBLY go wrong??

        Might just be a work of genius. You will quickly find the people who need to be fired. :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by splutty ( 43475 )

        Can't answer that question, really. It'd overflow Slashdot's max comment size.

      • Why would anyone post to a work social media, which is the opposite of what you should be doing.

        Social media posting ... at work ... on an app run by your employer. What could POSSIBLY go wrong??

        That was the plan the whole time. Now you're making it no-fun for every-one!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      MS pushes this because they can then run "analytics" on your participation. No participating, then you aren't working. It is the equivalent of PooperPoint on acid.

      Speaking of PooperPoints, I once saw a briefing by Gen. Patraeus on a campaign in Iraq. He's merrily going through the slides and then he hits the Gonzowhopper. It was amazing, arrows pointing every which way, big arrows, small arrows, double arrows, arrows the bifurcated and trifurcated, arrows pointing at nothing at all, arrow pointing out the w

    • Why would anyone post to a work social media, which is the opposite of what you should be doing. I can just imagine the next raise evaluation combing through your social media posts. Sorry sir, you've been demoted as you have expressed opinions

      Yep.

      "self-expression in the workplace"

      This is a recipe for disaster for most normal people. Companies are already firing people for things they say outside of the workplace. Now they want them to "express themselves" in the office? Yeah, no. Do your job and keep your head down, if you're smart.

      • ...This is a recipe for disaster for most normal people. Companies are already firing people for things they say outside of the workplace. Now they want them to "express themselves" in the office? Yeah, no. Do your job and keep your head down, if you're smart.

        Genius product. Get those expressions logged in a legally-usable fashion, as property of the Company, not the expressionist.

        What do we classify this thing as, now?... House Cleansing product? Re-alignment operation? Reorganization Incentive Aid App?

        Do not use that last one as an acronym or it might give 'em ideas.

    • It's almost certainly supposed to be "facebook but for work shit", not literal facebook clone where you post your cat videos and racist rants.

    • Why would anyone post to a work social media, which is the opposite of what you should be doing. I can just imagine the next raise evaluation combing through your social media posts. Sorry sir, you've been demoted as you have expressed opinions

      See, since it makes no sense, that's why it works. It was the(ir) plan all along. You'll see it. You just have to wait until the benefit emerges.

  • Teams is shit (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @01:06PM (#62716408)

    Teams is so fucking awful. Where did they come up with their UI design? I can only think of two possibilities: 1) they pulled it out of their large colon 2) they went for the stretch goal, reached all the way up and pulled it out of their small intestine. Cut and fucking paste doesn't even work for the conversation buffer. What is this, an monument to broken engineering process? Alas poor Skype, I knew him.

    Lathering a crappy facebook clone on top of a foundation of liquid shit is going to work out so super well.

    • There's also no good way to extract and save an enture conversation including attachments if you thunk it's necessary for one reason or another.

      • which it often is.

        • I don't understand the bad UI and lack of basic functionality either. Aren't Copy, Paste, Save, Save As, etc... basic App functions? You telling me it's "hard" to put in basic functions by default? And they own the fucking OS too. Just who's coding this stuff?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gtall ( 79522 )

            Well, to be fair to Microsoft, those common UI notions confuse their marketroids. Best leave them off or customers might start asking why they do not work correctly.

            • Well, to be fair to Microsoft, those common UI notions confuse their marketroids. Best leave them off or customers might start asking why they do not work correctly.

              Whoa. Is this 1991? /trip down memory ln.

      • There's also no way to delete conversations, MS saves everything so if you ever say something dumb, you're fucked

        • There's also no way to delete conversations, MS saves everything so if you ever say something dumb, you're fucked

          I thought there was a GP setting for whether your internal db saves them or if they're archived at MS...?

          Oh, wait, GP setting 9 - mirror. Ah, I see how it's done. Genius.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

          I wouldn't be surprised if there are options for company management to erase whole conversations, especially if there's something that can make the company look bad while letting you off the hook.
          That's one reason why I'd like the option to export whole conversations.

      • There's also no good way to extract and save an enture conversation including attachments if you thunk it's necessary for one reason or another.

        "One reason or another."

        You have such elegant and shortened ways of wording nefarious actions. ;)

        My Company just purchased the entire product and needs an Extraction Specialist. Are you looking for the best job in the Enterprise? /humor

    • Or there this is step 2 of the three steps to profit$. Seriously this has to have been in a thought in an executive meeting:
      "We are failing at Teams and cannot beat Slack. What can we do?"
      "Why not make it the new Facebook?"
      "Brilliant!"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      With ANALytics!! Get Ready for Engagement!!

      • With ANALytics!! Get Ready for Engagement!!

        Wow. my next full-time high-paying job with bonuses for every find? My dreams are coming true! /humor

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by klubar ( 591384 )

      Although I like Teams (it's not terrible), I wish there was better channel management. I'd like to be able to archive a channel when I project is done, split channels or merge them.

      However, the meeting features are really good. The automatic closed captions and transcripts are great for meetings and note taking.

      The inviting users outside your company is pretty funky and not very intutitive.

    • I'd be happy enough with it if it didn't suck every fucking resource on my limited work computer into oblivion. Shit software is dime a dozen, shit software that chugs on the other hand, that requires a unique set of programming skills.

      • I'd be happy enough with it if it didn't suck every fucking resource on my limited work computer into oblivion. Shit software is dime a dozen, shit software that chugs on the other hand, that requires a unique set of programming skills.

        Memory leak? It's a memory cleanser. Keeps it moist and healthy for extraction... uhh. archiva.... erm.. Keeps it on the go, to the unemp... errrrh..
        Hold on, I need to call Marketing. I'll get back with ya. Don't worry, I can find you in the log.... uh.. on the piece of paper on my desk.

  • with hangouts ect, and look at how that worked for them. Don't think microsoft is going to be able to do any better. Heck, most people hate facebook now, so why would you want to emulate them.

    • " Heck, most people hate facebook now, so why would you want to emulate them."

      "i cAn dO iT rIgHt i sWeAr!!1"

      Except if they did get as big as Facebook, they will ultimately end up doing the same shit that has Facebooknso reviled these days.

      Also lots of saturation with a bazillion different (anti)social media platforms, and people disconnecting entirely because they are sick of the mind trash that it incubates.

    • with hangouts ect, and look at how that worked for them. Don't think microsoft is going to be able to do any better. Heck, most people hate facebook now, so why would you want to emulate them.

      That's hang-ups. Think from a design and marketing perspective. Greatness is only an executive commercial statement away! Well, it says executive in the fine print you can't read on a HD display. Ignore 'paid' and 'actor' around it.

  • Yay! (Score:2)

    by RobinH ( 124750 )
    I mean, I woke up this morning with an epiphany: "You know what we need? More Facebook!" Thank you Microsoft! You read my mind!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      We need less facebook.

    • I mean, I woke up this morning with an epiphany: "You know what we need? More Facebook!" Thank you Microsoft! You read my mind!

      I'm not making this up. I read that as "I woke up with morning with empathy" and the rest just went from there. /humor.. but real

  • Basically this will just turn into yet another "you can say only what we want you to say" platform, this time skipping the middleman for firing you for wrongthink.

    1984 is past, forget about big brother.
    Welcome to Teams, where your employer is your mother.

    • There is nothing 1984 about this. Employers firing employees for not toeing the company line (wrongthink) goes back 100s of years. It is literally the status quo and not a slippery slide.

  • How do you make Facebook worse? Give it to Microsoft....

    • How do you make Facebook worse? Give it to Microsoft....

      Just have some mega-rich person who wants to say they own this piece of Internets. Like what's-his-name.. *snap snap* can't think of it.. Some dude with space crap and cars.

  • Maybe the could put a couple of features into their Linux client instead? It is so far being the Win/Mac clients in terms of useful features (like breakout rooms, to name one example).

  • Yeah, get the employees nice and relaxed, ready to spill every little thing about their personal lives. And then you have a nice little mountain of dirt you can use to justify showing the employee the door with a security guard escort.

    Moral: Don't give employers anything they can hang you for, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant.

    • They already have everything they need. Everything is already recorded, and you can get fired for someone overhearing a private conversation at the watercooler as well.

      This won't make it any worse. If your employer was a shitcunt looking to get rid of you your days were numbered one way or the other.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nomadic ( 141991 )

      "Yeah, get the employees nice and relaxed, ready to spill every little thing about their personal lives."

      If you are dumb enough to put something on a company site that would get you fired, then you probably should be fired just for that.

  • I don't know what else to say.

  • You would think that those in a management position would understand that collaboration takes time, energy, resources. It's not free. The "more people = better" knowledge product space in corporate consultancy is bad enough. Now we have to socialize as well?

    I work for a science organization and some idiot consultant sold them on social media for work. It went over like a lead balloon.

    I don't want any more people than necessary involved in my projects. Please take this bullshit and move to another planet.

    • So.. is this a generational thing to get the younger to feel more comfortable in this social space? Or is it more for the slightly older but not that much, to have a place to engage in that uncontrollable habit of spending time using something like FB, but not actually exiting the company's network to do it? Or is it for the older generation to be convinced it's an excellent tool for efficiency and collaboration (and let's not deny it, snooping on what everyone's talking about), only to find out after abo

  • I don't use Facebook or any other social media because I would say shit that would get me fired or worse.

    I'm sure as hell not going to use a Facebook type app WHILE AT work. That would be career suicide for sure.

    We have Yammer and Teams at work. I'm constantly blasted with emails about shit people posted on Yammer, none of which is interesting or relevant to my job. It is pure distraction.

    • I don't use Facebook or any other social media because I would say shit that would get me fired or worse.

      I'm sure as hell not going to use a Facebook type app WHILE AT work. That would be career suicide for sure.

      We have Yammer and Teams at work. I'm constantly blasted with emails about shit people posted on Yammer, none of which is interesting or relevant to my job. It is pure distraction.

      I work for a pre-employment background screening company. We occasionally have people ask us if we search social media platforms during the background check. Sales has some nice way of saying, "No. No. Hell no. We don't do stupid crap like that, man."

      And yes, there are other background screening companies that do. And it actually sells. Why and what? I don't know. How much time a person spends on it while they're not at work? Search their entire platform's history on their account to see if they m

      • I had a private business at some point. I routinely web searched applicants. Of course I NEVER based hiring decisions on what I found....

  • Ripping off competitors’ features is part of Facebook’s day to day business plan. I don’t see why we should care that Microsoft decided that turnabout is fair play.

    • Ripping off competitors’ features is part of Facebook’s day to day business plan. I don’t see why we should care that Microsoft decided that turnabout is fair play.

      That's like saying we shouldn't care that when some organization releases a contagious respiratory virus in a major city, some other organization jumps on the bandwagon and releases their own version of the virus.

  • Don't invest any time on this BS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by skaag ( 206358 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @02:28PM (#62716668) Homepage Journal

    Any time you invest into yet another "social network" is a huge waste of time. We all know Microsoft will eventually kill this, in around 2~3 years, possibly sooner.

    • Unfortunately it's been around for way longer than that. Why would MS kill it? They don't kill anything no matter how frigging dumb it is. Just checked, yep my massively underpowered tablet still has Xbox mode in Windows, still includes the 3d printer utility, and the mixed reality portal most of which has far lower market share than Yammer.

      They aren't Google, this turd is here to stay.

  • Social features made Skype worse.
    Teams is bloated, even more than Skype, but at least it got professional collaboration and communication right.
    When I use Teams, I expect professional stuff, not frivolous socializing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Professional collaboration is either talking to each other in person with a handy chalkboard or talking on the phone. Not,

      You: Hi there, how about we put x in y.

      Other Guy: No, I think we should out y in x.

      You: Have you considered z.

      OG: Not really, it doesn't do it for me because of w.

      5 hrs later.

      You: Gee, I feel satisfied, was it good for you.

      OG: Bzzkzeqqx...uh, I dropped off there, what were we talking about?

      Or try Teams video conferencing:

      You: Hi there, can everyone see me.

      XYZ: Yes, we can.

      X: How about we

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jma05 ( 897351 )

        Mine is usually just turning off video and mostly screen sharing with exchange of control, over audio.
        And some screen annotation & document exchange. I like being able to switch devices, mid-call.
        Teams integrates with enterprise authentication, embeds office suite etc. It's calls, calendaring, messaging, files, wikis, notes etc all in 1 place.
        It goes nothing like you described.

        • Teams integrates with enterprise authentication, embeds office suite etc. It's calls, calendaring, messaging, files, wikis, notes etc all in 1 place. It goes nothing like you described.

          IBM Notes did that too in the late 90's / early 00's, only better (if set up and maintained by a decent admin).

          And for me the interface just doesn't work. I find it cluttered (like someone else mentioned, multiple search boxes below each other doing different stuff depending on context). A lot of stuff you need is hidden, stuff you don't need is in plain sight, and there is no way to customize it. It eats resources like you wouldn't believe and the performance is still sluggish.

  • Going to make me change my inbox spam rules for both viva and yammer I'll bet.

  • People don't want a social network for work. They just turn into fluff and most people get bored quickly and stop participating. People go on social networks to act like narcissistic Karens and argue with people they don't agree with. You can't do that at work. Well, you can, but unless you are the boss don't expect to be around for long.

  • Just a few hours ago, I had to deal with my boss getting embarrassed as he tried to demo a brand new Logitech videoconferencing system we purchased that's designed specifically for MS Teams. It uses the "Teams Room" product, which is apparently just a slightly customized version of the usual Teams software that it downloads off the Microsoft Store and uses on the included mini PC running the "IoT edition" of Windows 10.

    We had to purchase a dedicated "Teams Room standard edition" license for the unit and I

  • Microsoft Phone (Score:3)

    by sphealey ( 2855 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2022 @06:13PM (#62717242)

    This new Microsoft social media thing will run really great on the Microsoft Phone!

    • Your joke is unfortunately going to fall flat. Every turd MS releases unfortunately gets taken up by companies no matter how bad.

      We all wish this was a Windows Phone. Hell I wish it were a Zune. But the reality is MS's social network Yammer bullshit has been around for longer than Teams, and they are a perfect marriage of shit which companies fall over themselves to implement.

  • I see no way that this "product" will assist me in communicating with my coworkers, so I need to ask, "What is the point of this? Who will use it? For what?"

    Facebook might be popular, but I do not see the need for it, or a clone of it, as a communications platform at work. WTF even is this thing? Did they try it out inside Microsoft first to even see if anyone would use it?

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