Instead of having to hide their social media use while at work, many employees may soon find online networking essential to their role.
That is the hope of Facebook, which is trialling a new sort of news feed for corporate use. Facebook at Work, the platform in question, has been designed to facilitate workplace communication.
In a move that will see it competing against the likes of Microsoft and Google, as well as some emerging startups, the social service will allow for employees to see the groups, events, messages, and statuses that they have come to expect from Facebook, but solely on tailored news feeds for corporate use.
It is believed that by doing so, businesses could potentially streamline the way that their teams operate, while also making savings in the workplace due to increased efficiency.
According to the Financial Times, the social networking giant has been working on the design of Facebook at Work for some time, with TechCrunch purporting that the platform may have evolved out of the firm’s London office, after seeing how its own staff members used Facebook to carry out their roles.
Facebook at Work is to be helmed by Lars Rasmussen, the social site’s director of engineering. He made his way to the company from Google, where he was in charge of developing a similar product called Google Wave. However, it was dropped in 2010 after only a year, due to a low uptake.
However, the timing may now be right for such tools, with research company Gartner predicting that $344bn (£226.2bn) will be spent on ‘enterprise software’ during 2015.
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