[optim_cynic33]

(Throwaway because this includes inside baseball theory and it's not appropriate to comment as my usual self)

The technical document https://developers.facebook.com/docs/workplace/account-manag... includes an example to create a new user via an authenticated POST request.

Previously facebook had a party line that each human had at most one facebook account (which was in contrast to its competitors where some humans had more than one account, e.g. @HistoryInPics), and creating an account required a few more hurdles than a single POST request. Now that businesses can create users it looks like that line has subtly disappeared.

If workplace takes off, I would expect faster growth in monthly active users because both the numerator will be larger and now business will be paying people to log in to facebook, and those users will also likely want to glance at their personal accounts, as well.

Plus, this move makes it harder for corporate firewalls to block facebook altogether, hits against google suite, and makes browsing facebook at work defensible... super interesting.

[wodenokoto]

I think each workplace by facebook will have seperate users and separate domains, so the user-count of facebook-proper will not be affected by companies have bulk access to account creation.

This should also keep facebook proper blockable.

I didn't catch the baseball theory part of your comment advertised in the beginning.

[Spooky23]

Microsoft said that too about O365, and its true -- for Exchange and Outlook only.

The reality is that to access all O365 products, you need to have access to CDN domains and live.com authentication infrastructure, and you need to constantly monitor errors in the network because cloud scale services change IPs all of the time.

I'm sure FB will be similar.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

It was a curve ball, probably he spit on it.

[will_pseudonym]

Since we're talking about communication channels, when I was first reading your comment, I read "party line" as in a shared phone line that people used in the early telephone service days. I was definitely confused. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_(telephony)

[prodigal_erik]

A social medium with multiple accounts for the same user? Haven't we already seen that go badly? https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/bwJ7kAEL...