Social media phenomenon Facebook has recently launched a version of its network designed for use in the workplace.
Earlier this week, the company unveiled Workplace by Facebook, a project that it has been working on for the last two years.
The platform will have many similarities to the main Facebook site, however, its traditional blue and white colour scheme has been replaced by a toned-down shade of grey. Users of the tool will be able to post status updates, and upload photos and videos. Furthermore, just as they can on the social site, they can also like and comment on other people’s posts, and chat to colleagues in real-time.
However, as this platform is designed for use in the office, instead of sharing holiday snaps, cat videos and other viral hits, Workplace is supposed to contain minutes from meetings, corporate schedules and messages from the top of the company hierarchy. Its algorithms will detect which updates are the most important and display them at the top of the news feed, as like the social network, these are not posted in chronological order.
Other features include analytics and a security function that allows organisations to integrate Workplace with their current CRM’s and IT systems.
Throughout its two-year testing, Workplace has been used by more than 1,000 companies from all over the world, including the Royal Bank of Scotland and Club Med, and has proved to be popular with companies in countries including the UK, US, Norway, France and India.
The headquarters for the service is located in London, which bears huge significance to the company, as this is the first major product offered by Facebook that has been designed, tested and launched outside of the US.
Despite being designed by a social network, Workplace is a separate entity. Employees do not have to have a regular Facebook account of their own to use it, as employers will set up new profiles for them to use. Furthermore, the two services don’t share any data about users.
Workplace has been designed to be easy to use and features a smartphone-friendly interface. It does not feature any advertising; instead it charges businesses a small monthly fee of around $1-3.
Facebook has also announced that the company has been using a version of the system internally for many years, and the result of this means that emails within the company have been all but eliminated.
Facebook has come a long way in its 12 years of existence and the launch of Workplace is the latest milestone in the company’s rise to the top. It has attracted more than one billion users to its social site, becoming a dominant force in their social lives, and it has now set its sights on the office and becoming an integral part of people’s working lives.
The company has said that it hopes to have hundreds of millions of users in a few years’ time.
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