Author Archives: Matt Kapko

Facebook today announced that more than 14,000 organizations are using Workplace, the company’s social network for business. Workplace launched six months ago with an initial group of 1,000 companies that tested the platform during a 20-month pilot period. The company also announced a series of new integrations with third-party vendors, a new API for video production and streaming, and the introduction of bots to Groups and the Work Chat app.

[ Related: First CIO on Workplace by Facebook talks collaboration in the enterprise ]

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Facebook is introducing a free version of Workplace, the company’s social network for business, in a bid to appeal to smaller and more cost-sensitive organizations that don’t necessarily need enterprise-class services. Workplace Standard, which will initially be offered as a beta, won’t include administrative controls, some security compliance measures, monitoring tools, single sign-on or integration with third-party services, according to Facebook.

[ Related: First CIO on Workplace by Facebook talks collaboration in the enterprise ]

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Snap, the makers of Snapchat, has faced at least some of the pressures that come with being a publicly traded company for a full month now and it’s already showing signs of change. On Friday, the company enabled a new search function that allows you to search through public posts, or Stories. In its pursuit of more eyeballs and longer sessions in the app, Snap is evolving and embracing features that run counter to its traditional user experience and more closely mirror those of its competitors.

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Within the span of five weeks, Facebook has copied a format pioneered by Snapchat and introduced it to all three of its most widely used apps: WhatsApp, Messenger and the primary Facebook mobile app. “Stories,” a tool that lets you share photos and videos in a feed that “disappears” after 24 hours, came to Instagram in August and started rolling out to Facebook proper this week. With short-lived media promoted and featured prominently across the company’s entire family of mobile apps, the Snapification of Facebook is now complete.

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CIOs and IT managers are increasingly adopting Microsoft’s Office 365 and Google’s G Suite for collaboration, productivity and messaging. These cloud-based productivity suites are expanding, gaining new feature sets and new apps for enterprise users. Earlier this month, both Google and Microsoft introduced chat-based collaboration apps to reposition for competition in this fast evolving and hotly contested space.

Microsoft’s Teams, which has been in beta since November, was released for general availability for Office 365 customers. And Google introduced a rebuilt Hangouts, which has been split into two apps — Hangouts Chat for chat-based communications and Hangouts Meet for audio and video conferencing.

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LinkedIn is taking a more forceful approach to news curation. The company today is releasing a “trending storylines” feed that lives alongside your personally curated feeds to showcase news articles and related posts personalized based on your interests and profession.

The experience is like the trending topics Facebook surfaces for its users. The trending storylines are determined by a mix of algorithms and human curation from LinkedIn’s editorial team. When you are in the trending storylines tab, you can also follow new people and topics to improve your primary feed.

LinkedIn

Apple this week is releasing its most affordable iPad to date. The refreshed 9.7-inch iPad, which packs a Retina screen and Apple’s A9 chip in a device that effectively replaces the iPad Air 2, is priced at $329 with 32GB of storage.

The $70 price drop makes the entry-level iPad more competitive, particularly among schools that can now snag the tablet for under $300 at educational pricing. Businesses that are motivated by price and don’t require more advanced features in the iPad Pro will also be giving the iPad another look as a result of these changes, according to Avi Greengart, research director at GlobalData.

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Bijan Sabet is a venture capitalist with a golden touch. His wins are as legendary as the consumer and social tech companies he helped grow into the juggernauts they are today. Spark Capital, the Boston-based firm he cofounded and where he serves as general partner, has invested in more than 100 companies to date, including Twitter, Tumblr, Oculus and Foursquare.

Christopher Michel