Facebook launches Workplace, a business version of Facebook

We first started hearing rumors about a special version of Facebook for working professionals about two years ago. News stories displayed here appear in our category for Business and are licensed via a specific agreement between LongIsland.com and The Associated Press, the world’s oldest and largest news organization.

Rather than offering freemium or premium tiers, or basing the price on the number of users within a company or other such factors, Workplace by Facebook will offer the same features to all users, charging by monthly active users. It’s free for nonprofits and educational institutions. If it has between 1,000 and 10,000, it drops to $2 per user.

Indeed, Facebook Workplace is similar to Facebook, though it’s shaded white instead of the company’s trademark blue, and benefits from security being a top priority, according to the company.

After 18 months of testing, the Facebook founder’s platform for work has publicly launched. Facebook said it created this feature after hearing that company leaders wanted any easy way to broadcast to their employees.

The tool would appeal to companies that wanted to “shrink their hierarchies” and use video tools like Facebook Live for internal communications, he said.

But in a world cluttered with new tools like Slack or Trello and still drowning in email could Workplace be a platform too far or just the tonic in a planet of the apps. However, this may mean Facebook charges companies to use the app as an alternative way to make money.

“Facebook believes that coming out of the consumer world, where these Millennials honed their habits, is a market they can succeed in and capitalize on financially”, said Forrester analyst Craig LeClair. The firm forecasts enterprise IT spending will reach $2.9 trillion in 2016, and it expects millennials to comprise half of all workers by 2020. “How do I enrich my life through better connection to friends and relatives”, he said.

Customers aren’t required to have a personal Facebook account to use Workplace and employers can’t use the tool to see what employees do on their personal accounts.

You can know more about the topic and about Facebook’s latest grand enterprise, by visiting Workplace’s official website. “If they choose to turn off the service, all of that goes away”.

Workplace by Facebook looks very much like the company’s flagship social network.

The company has also announced Multi-Company Groups – shared spaces that allow employees from different organisations to work together. Just in case it isn’t clear: the business service is not connected in any way to an employee’s personal Facebook identity. “Part of the future of work is that people have the expectation that there will be open communication across the organization, and this is a great way to deliver on that”, explains Lori Goler, Facebook’s vice president of global human resources. All users get unlimited file, photo, and video storage, unlimited team and project groups, live video streaming and “Monitoring tools for IT teams”.

Marking the first global launch outside the US, Mendelsohn spoke about the evils of email, selling Facebook’s culture as a ideal fit for the enterprise.