Microsoft Teams gets its own Facebook-like social network

Exactly 10 years ago today, Microsoft $1.2 billion Yammer acquisition, an enterprise-focused social networking platform. despite Major Yammer overhaul in 2019Microsoft is increasingly getting into Teams and new Viva platform as communication centers in workplaces.

Microsoft is launching Viva Engage today, a new Facebook-like app that promotes social networking within Teams at work.

Viva Engage builds on some of Yammer’s strengths by fostering digital communities, conversations, and self-expression in the workplace. While Yammer often looks like an extension of SharePoint and Office, Viva Engage looks like a Facebook copy. It includes a story section that is effectively your Facebook news feed and includes conversation posts, videos, images, and more. It looks and feels just like Facebook and is clearly designed to feel similar so employees will use it to share news and even personal interests.

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft has been trying to create something similar for a decade, with its first Yammer investment in enterprise-focused social networks that paved the way for communities in organizations that trust Office. Yammer integration into SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics, and Skype has been pushed harder than something businesses regularly request.

As such, Microsoft Teams is increasingly positioned as the business and communication hub within Microsoft, and the pandemic has certainly accelerated businesses’ transition to hybrid work and the need for apps like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Slack. Teams has now become the natural place for employees to communicate and share for many businesses, and it’s increasingly become their own form of social networking for many employees running Teams channels.

Image: Microsoft

Viva Engage will also include Stories – yes, the same stories you find on Snapchat and Instagram and the LinkedIn feature Microsoft has gave up last year. Stories in Microsoft Teams and Viva Engage will allow employees to post just as they do on Instagram, so if you’re dying to share your vacation photos with colleagues, you no longer need to follow each other on Instagram or cram each other’s Outlook. inboxes.

All in all, Viva Engage offers another way to build community within an organization, and Microsoft’s Teams integration and focus on consumer-like social networks may make it more successful than it has tried in the past. It’s hard not to imagine that Viva Engage was created with Facebook Workplace or Meta’s Workplace in mind, it has now become a brand. Microsoft is increasingly wary of Meta entering the business, and the couple is increasingly on a crash course for metaverse competition.