Facebook relased an app redesign today, and so did Workplace by Facebook, and while Facebook loves Stories, the workplace may not be the place for them.
A new Facebook redesign internally referred to as FB5 launched today for users in the United States, the culmination of hundreds of details that CEO Mark Zuckerberg said adds up to “the biggest change to the app and website in the last five years.”
The new Facebook app launch coincided with several news stories shared at the F8 developer conference like WhatsApp video calls for Portal, the new Oculus Quest, and a redesign of Workplace by Facebook, a workplace communications app that competes with Microsoft Teams and Slack.
The Stories format, where content is visible only to friends and disappears in 24 hours, became popular on Snapchat but has since come to Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. In roughly two years or less, each surpassed Snapchat and now command hundreds of millions of daily users. Stories were made more prominent in the new Facebook app, and today, Zuckerberg said Stories are core to the future of a more private and ephemeral social experience on Facebook.
Stories from Instagram will soon be visible to Facebook Messenger users, and with the unification of Facebook’s messaging products, there’s a good chance Stories will someday be visible on Portal. But it’s not ready for the enterprise, Workplace VP Julien Codorniou told VentureBeat in an interview at F8 in San Jose, California.
Since the launch of Workplace in October 2016, other popular Facebook features like Safety Check and Facebook Live were incorporated into Workplace, and some customers have asked for them, but don’t expect to see your boss sharing Stories anytime soon, Codorniou said.
