It seems that every few weeks I’m sitting down to write up another article about a Facebook product or service that’s just been launched or revealed. A week ago they launched Messenger Lite to emerging markets, followed shortly by the launch of Facebook Marketplace. And then just a few days ago, Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage to expand upon the Oculus division at Facebook. And today, a blog post tells us how the massive company manages to coordinate many of its staff: through Facebook Workplace.
Facebook for the workplace seems like the most counterproductive term in history. Trying to mix a social platform that people use to a share a million cat pictures or videos (thanks Mo), with work seems like a no-brainer; you don’t. But people need to get their Facebook fix and as a result, some workplaces and many schools block access to the social media website. But Facebook has its own solution, a more work-centric version of the social media platform called Workplace.
Workplace began as an internal version of Facebook, that slowly got released to certain organisations for testing around a year ago. Back then it was called Facebook at Work and it saw itself get adopted by large multinational companies like Danone, Starbucks and Booking.com, international nonprofits such as Oxfam, and regional leaders such as YES Bank in India and the Government Technology Agency of Singapore.
So how does Workplace work? In broad terms, it consists of most of Facebook’s base features such as News Feed, or the ability to create and share in Groups or via chat, useful features such as Live, Reactions, Search and Trending posts. However, it also incorporates Workplace only features such as a dashboard with analytics and integrations with single sign-on, in addition to identity providers that allow companies to more easily integrate Workplace with their existing IT systems. A new feature they’re also adding to the platform is called Multi-Company Groups, a series of shared spaces that allow employees from different organisations to work together. This particular feature will roll out in the coming few weeks.
However, what Facebook doesn’t advertise in their blog post is that this isn’t a free service. Yes, you can get a free 3-month trial, but after that, you’ll have to shell out pocket change. At the most, it only costs $3 a month per user for a company that has less than a 1000 employees. Education and nonprofit institutions can use it for free. However, what intrigued me the most was the following: unlimited file, photo, and video storage.
You can sign up for Workplace by Facebook over at https://workplace.fb.com
