Facebook Launches Workplace Worldwide

Facebook has devised a way to get people to stop using Facebook while at work, and start working while on Facebook. Following a recent announcement, Workplace (formerly called “Facebook at Work”) will be available to any and all companies, turning the social network into a business network, providing enterprise messaging and collaboration capabilities.

Previously, Workplace was available in private beta. According to Facebook, over 1,000 organizations have already been using it, particularly in India, the U.S., U.K., Norway, and France. With the end of the beta, and with Workplace made available for all, those numbers may soon change.

Workplace is, at its core, Facebook designed for use in a business environment. All the usual Facebook features, such as group pages, newsfeed, chats, and live video, are available, but are designed to connect a company’s employees, rather than one’s friends, family, and those annoying ad-bots that someone accidentally added as a friend and now spams your newsfeed.

Additionally, Workplace offers new features made for businesses, such as analytics dashboards. Workplace is also separate from Facebook’s regular social network, so as to prevent employees from switching back and forth to mask their distractions.

Along with the increased availability, Facebook announced new additions to Workplace, such as Multi-Company Groups. While Workplace groups were previously used for employees of a single company, Multi-Company Groups are designed to allow collaboration between organizations. There’s also a new Workplace Partner Program, a group of tech and service organizations aimed at bringing Workplace to more businesses.

However, unlike Facebook itself, Workplace is not free to use (except for educational users). Companies will have to pay for their employees to use it, although they’ll only be charged $1-$3 for each active user per month, depending on the number of active users. While that may make Workplace something of an investment, at least users won’t have to worry about their newsfeeds being filled with paid content and advertisements that are eerily relevant to the last post they commented on.

Facebook has done a good job of getting some large global companies to use the service, including Starbucks, Booking.com, Oxfam, YES Bank in India, and the Government Technology Agency of Singapore.

According to Blair Pleasant of UCStrategies, “Facebook Workplace has the potential to disrupt the enterprise messaging and collaboration market, based on its competitive pricing and well-known user interface, and may force downward pricing pressures on solutions like Slack and Cisco Spark. However, Facebook will have to overcome potential concerns related to security and privacy, and will have to do some evangelizing to convince businesses that Workplace is enterprise-ready and not simply a Facebook clone for the work environment. Companies like Vonage, Google, and Microsoft (Skype) have done a good job of moving their consumer brands to the business world, and Facebook should be able to do the same.”

Pleasant adds: “It will be interesting to see how many channel partners Facebook attracts with its Workplace Partner Program, and whether it will be able to reach business customers through these partners or if it will have to build out a direct sales organization for Workplace. Facebook will also need to work with business partners to link their applications to Workplace. Box CEO Aaron Levie clearly sees the opportunity for working with Workplace, as he wrote in a blog post that ‘At Box, we’re incredibly excited because Box and Workplace have been collaborating for a while now. In the coming months, we'll be working to build several integrations that will enable seamless productivity and communication - all of which will help power the future of work’. Facebook will need to work with a range of companies like Box, as well as developers to add more value to Workplace, expanding its value throughout the enterprise.”

For more information, visit https://workplace.fb.com.