In taking another giant stride toward bringing a paradigm shift in the social media space, Facebook brings, in October, a work version of its social network ‘Facebook at Work’ which caters only to enterprises and business networking.
Facebook at Work, according to a report, belongs to the trend of making corporate software friendly to consumers. On the platform, co-workers are connected and are able to use posts to exchange ideas and assume new tasks. Groups are able to make decisions and keep themselves on the same page.
The long awaited suite of communication tools for businesses and their employees was berthed in 2014 and stands to be different from the usual Facebook account. This time, all communications- news feed, messaging, events, groups, chats, search, networking- are taking place inside the company.
“There’s a big chunk of people’s time that Facebook really doesn’t address at all today, and that’s the time they spend working. Facebook at Work is a way to open up a whole new addressable market for Facebook with fairly significant potential revenues,” said Jan Dawson, chief analyst with Jackdaw Research. “It’s also a nice hedge against what’s an almost entirely advertising-driven business today, with a new business model based on subscriptions instead.”
On the pricing plan “Facebook believes it can keep individual employees engaged with the product, so it is betting on a pricing plan that charges companies per monthly active user instead of charging a flat rate per company,” according to Julien Codorniou, director, Facebook at Work.
The new social network competes with apps such as Slack, Skype, Microsoft’s Yammer, Convo, which are already used globally in the workplace.
More than 450 companies have been testing Facebook at Work for free such as Heineken, Fox Fabrics Ltd and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
Kevin Hanley, director of design at the Royal Bank of Scotland, while attesting to the service said, “Facebook at Work lets our staff communicate, discuss and solve problems faster and more efficiently in a way that tools, such as email, simply can’t.”
Facebook on its part said, “Companies find that they can eliminate or drastically reduce their need for internal collaboration tools such as their intranet, telephony, video-conferencing and distribution lists.
“Use News Feed to stay updated, join groups to collaborate, send messages and get notifications about what’s most relevant to you,” the social media platform added.
