Hisham Sarwar
Workplace is the name that is given to Facebook’s new enterprise-focused social networking and messaging service. This is basically a mobile and desktop app that provide news feed, translation features, video and audio calling, Chat direct messaging, Live Video, reactions to its users. It is not restricted to any specific group of customers; it literally wants “anyone” to use the app.
For 20 months Facebook at Work has been working under closed beta, the company finally decided to launch it as a new brand. For its monthly active users, it is providing a new kind of pricing model. Facebook is now looking at the bigger picture and not just focusing on desk dwelling knowledge workers. These are the typical buyers and users of the company’s enterprise messaging service. Facebook wants to involve those people who use the platform in their non-working life such as employees who maintain machines or serve customers.
This new service is being introduced after so many similar services have made their mark in the industry such as Slack, Yammer, Chatter, Hipchat, and Jive. These are the popular communication and messaging services of their kind. There are some other messaging services that were developed specifically for non-desk workers. These include Beekeeper, Zinc and many more. But Facebook launched this app after so long because many possible certifications were required to become a SaaS vendor.
According to the director of Workplace Julien Codorniou, the product is still undergoing many developments as recently Workplace joined the US/EU Privacy Shield. Secondly, the company wanted to see how this product goes with government agencies and conventional industries. The reason for this was to test the app with respect to each industry. After testing of all sorts, Workplace is finally ready to be launched.
There are many messaging apps in the market but Workplace will provide similar features with a twist to the users. First is the pricing model for the Facebook users. Workplace will charge active users as $3 per user every month to the first 1,000 users; for the next 1,001-10,000 users it will charge $2 and $1 for any MAUs above. Facebook only wanted to charge users for something they actually use. The company is targeting the large companies and organizations. 36,000 employees at the carrier Telenor are the early customers that have already signed up with the platform and also 100,000 employees are from the Royal Bank of Scotland. The company is gaining a mass audience for its market in order to grow the business ever than before. This much larger audience is already linked with the Workplace; they are either using it or are familiar with it.
This app works just like Facebook and it will help consumers to connect with the product in no time. Most of its features will be similar to the original platform such as News Feed; there is a messenger for chatting. Customers will be able to create groups within their own company and chat with their colleagues. Live Video calling will provide video and audio calling. Users will be able to post comments using the multi-emotional reactions along with automatic features for translation.
Facebook has already made its name as a platform that helps people to communicate globally but this time it has appeared with a different approach, it is expanding its arena by directing its efforts towards the working world.
