Editorial
The recent demise of Meta/Facebook Workplace was one of several high-flying flameouts in the world of enterprise knowledge and collaboration platforms in the last few years, and one of two big announcements so far this year. The other was Microsoft’s decision to retire Viva Topics.
Both products launched with great fanfare — Workplace in 2016 and Viva Topics in 2019 (spawned out of Project Cortex). Their respective firms allocated significant resources to both products and staked a lot of credibility on their success. The question is: Why are both products canceled now, and why are other similar products like Google Workspace (re-launched in 2020) still hanging on?
Meta Phases Out Workplace
Meta’s official announcement of shuttering Workplace merely stated, “We’ve made the difficult decision to close Workplace from Meta, which will be going away in 2026.” No explanation given. None. Just, “We understand that this decision will be disruptive to the businesses, organizations and partners that rely on Workplace every day.” This is quite surprising considering that only two years ago, Meta/Facebook turned down a Workplace buyout that would have valued the enterprise product company at over $1 billion.
But consider this. While a product that boasts seven million users might satisfy many enterprise software companies, in the grand scheme of things, this is a drop in the ocean. In the consumer world, Facebook now has over three billion users. So, Workplace accounts for only 0.2% of its consumer users. In the enterprise, Workplace competitor Microsoft Teams boasts 320 million (business) users, 45 times that of Workplace.
This might also illustrate how a company that excels in consumer technology struggles to transition successfully into the enterprise technology market. Additionally, due to insufficient investment in the product, Workplace was unable to compete effectively with Microsoft Teams and Zoom, both of which thrived during the pandemic years.
Related Article: 8 Reasons Behind the Fall of Workplace
Microsoft Says Goodbye to Viva Topics
Earlier this month, Microsoft announced the sunsetting of Viva Topics in 2025. Officially, Microsoft pinned the reason on AI: “As our AI strategy continues to evolve, we’ll be retiring Viva Topics in February 2025 and will focus our efforts on building AI-powered knowledge experiences in Copilot. Copilot enables people in your organization to discover and learn more about topics, projects and concepts in a natural and automatic way and is integrated across the Microsoft 365 suite all while requiring minimal setup.”
Will AI address the deficiencies in Viva Topics, ultimately delivering on its promise, or is there more to it than that?
Why Now?
Like previous technology megatrends (remember application service providers, cloud SaaS, mobile Internet, social business, etc.), AI is top of mind today. Every vendor and product has been repositioned to be an AI company or offering. So, maybe Meta and Microsoft want to focus on the latest megatrend, which is certainly true, but why does that preclude working on other products? Meta invested heavily in the metaverse over the last few years while Microsoft has advanced many new technologies. So why bow out now?
Because this time it is different. AI is not only a new technology; it is the technology that will drive and enable every enterprise technology going forward. AI’s potential ability to continue to reinvent itself, pushes the edge of future technological envelopes, means that any distraction today must be avoided. Whoever wins today’s AI war will decide which companies rule the future.
So, for Meta, it’s an easy choice. A product with insignificant market impact is sucking valuable attention from mainstream efforts.
On the other hand, Google seems to be doubling down on Workspace, by adding an AI component. This makes sense because Google is at the forefront of AI development and this addition to the product is a natural extension, by providing better recommendations and suggestions to enterprise workers. This is similar to what Microsoft is doing with Copilot; making the generative AI and AI recommendation engines an integral part of the employee’s daily experience.
That’s why the Microsoft announcement is not so straightforward. Microsoft is doubling down on AI via Copilot. But what does that have to do with Viva Topics? It was a product that auto-classified content into enterprise “topics” so employees could easily discover information and knowledge in an intuitive way.
It turns out that Viva Topics proved far more difficult to implement and roll out, so adoption was low. Saying that Copilot’s AI capabilities will deliver on Viva Topics promise still needs to be proven. At worst, it is an elegant method to phase out an unprofitable product.
Related Article: Meta Bets on Interoperability to Give Its Metaverse Dreams Traction
Is AI the Solution to Everything?
Each week, we see announcements of well-known products now featuring AI capabilities or entirely new AI products claiming to surpass everything we've tried before. We must critically examine whether the significant investments in AI will truly address our most pressing business challenges.
Product companies understand that incorporating AI is essential to remain competitive and meet the evolving needs of their users. However, this strategy is not without its risks. It demands substantial investment, and there is no assurance that users will embrace these AI-enhanced products, particularly if they disrupt existing workflows or fail to provide clear, immediate benefits.
Moreover, the hype surrounding AI can lead to unrealistic expectations, where businesses might invest heavily in AI without fully understanding its limitations or the necessary changes to their infrastructure and processes.
In addition, while AI is powerful for automating processes, analyzing large datasets and making predictions, it is not a panacea for all business problems. AI excels at tasks that involve pattern recognition, predictive analytics and data-driven decision-making. However, it falls short in areas requiring human judgment, creativity and emotional intelligence. For instance, AI can streamline customer service with chatbots, but it can't replace the nuanced understanding and empathy of human interaction.
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For now, we must come to terms with the fact that Workplace and Viva Topics join an illustrious collection of other once promising enterprise knowledge and collaboration tools that sputtered, such as Jive Software, Atlassian’s Hipchat (and later Stride) and IBM’s Lotus Notes, to name just a few. And perhaps we should come to expect more products (even AI-powered ones) that will be cast away into the “dead pool” of enterprise collaboration products.
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