Facebook yesterday announced a new Workplace mobile app which it has used to run its own company “for many years”. Available at no charge from the App Store, Workplace for iPhone (formerly known as Facebook at Work) is now available to any company or organization that wants to use it. In a nutshell, Workplace puts the best of Facebook at your fingertips while packing in a few notable productivity features businesses may like.
For starters, Workplace users get to enjoy traditional Facebook features such as the News Feed, Live, Reactions, Search, Trending posts and the ability to create and share in Groups or via chat.
“This means you can chat with a colleague across the world in real time, host a virtual brainstorm in a Group, or follow along with your CEO’s presentation on Facebook Live,” writes the social networking behemoth.
Another unique Workplace feature: Multi-Company Groups.
rolling out to all Workplace customers in the coming weeks, Multi-Company Groups are shared spaces that let employees from different organizations work together.
Just like Apple, Facebook has also partnered with Deloitte as well as with other technology and professional service organizations on the Workplace Partner Program to help other companies get started with Workplace.
Unlike Google Apps for Work, Workplace users only pay for accounts that are actively using the product. Pricing starts at $3 per month for up to a 1,000 monthly active users and drops to $2 or just $1 per month as the number of monthly active users grows.
in comparison, Slack’s Standard plan is $6.67 per user. Slack’s free tier, however, imposes limitations on search and archive features. A free three-month trial period of Workplace is available.
“We think you should use Workplace because you love it, so we don’t lock you into a long-term contract,“ writes Facebook.
Workplace-only features include a dashboard with analytics and integrations with Single Sign-On, plus support for identity providers that allow companies to more easily integrate Workplace with their existing IT systems.
The company says it’d begun testing a version of Facebook for the workplace with a few major organizations over a year ago. More than a thousand organizations around the world are now using the Workplace app, according to the company.
So far, users have created nearly 100,000 groups. The top five countries using Workplace are India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway and France.
Your business can sign up for Workplace at workplace.fb.com. More information is available on the official Facebook Page at facebook.com/workplace.
Download Workplace by Facebook for free from the App Store.
Source: Facebook