With over a year of closed beta under its belt, Facebook at Work is now live under a new, official name: Workplace.
Essentially the same product as the every-day Facebook, Workplace is an entirely separate entity that swaps your family and friends with your co-workers. It requires its own login, mobile app, and users cannot move between professional and personal accounts.
Workplace enters the world of enterprise software at direct competition with other popular office communication tools such as Slack, the collaboration startup valued at $4 billion. Despite entering the game late, Facebook is banking on the simple idea that people generally already know how to use Facebook, making embracing Workplace an easy step forward for businesses who have yet to pick an office communication platform.
“The workplace is about more than just communicating between desks within the walls of an office. Some people spend their entire workday on the go, on their mobile phone. Others spend all day out in the field, or on the road. People work in different ways, around the world, and Workplace’s mission is to help them stay connected,” said a statement released by Facebook regarding the launch.
With over 1,000 organizations around the world using Workplace during its closed beta, Facebook cites examples of shipping companies using the platform in order to connect with their ship crews using Facebook Live video to a bank using Workplace instead of fax machines and newsletters to share updates with its distributed bank branches, as organizations who have adopted the platform.
Just this past Spring, Canadian Tire released their experiences with Workplace so far, encouraging its employees to use the platform.
Workplace includes unlimited file, photo, and video storage all stored on the cloud, unlimited team and project groups, live video streaming, monitoring tools for IT teams, 1:1 support for administrators, secure collaboration between companies, single-sign-on (SSO) support, and Integration with G Suite, Okta, OneLogin, Ping, Windows Azure AD.
Facebook’s monthly pricing model for Workplace is (in USD):
- $3 USD per user for companies with under 1,000 monthly active users
- $2 USD user for companies with 1,001 to 10,000 monthly active users
- $1 USD per user for companies with 10,000+ monthly active users
Additionally, Facebook announced Multi-Company Groups within Workplace that will allow employees from different organizations to work together to collaborate in a safe and secure manner. This feature will be rolling out to the public in the coming weeks.