Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2015 as a news piece about a product in beta. The “more than 1.3 billion users” figure and the planned 2015 launch are of that moment. The service later launched as Workplace by Facebook, and Meta has since announced it would be discontinued.
Facebook has not only set its sights on growing beyond its more than 1.3 billion users worldwide; it also wants to get inside companies and connect employees with one another through a new service initially called “Facebook at Work“, which, according to reports, Zuckerberg has finally shortened to “Work“.
That’s right: Facebook for work.
This social network, running in parallel to the traditional one, is currently being tested in beta by a number of large companies, before being opened up to all other businesses later in 2015.
Access to these new profiles is restricted to internal communication between employees of the same company, which might make it sound like an “intranet”. However, work accounts can in fact be accessed from outside the company.
In fact, this new work account can be linked to an existing profile, or you can create a new profile used only for work. In other words, you don’t need a personal Facebook account to open a work account, just as you don’t have to share your personal profile with your company.
Right now, many tech gurus predict that email as we know it is going to die out, and much sooner as a form of internal communication within companies, because with this new service a company’s employees will be able to send each other messages, use instant messaging, and share and edit files and work together.
What do we know about Facebook Work so far?
The truth is that we only know what the social network itself has told us. We know that the new network will look different (presumably a different colour), and we know that, at least for now, employees will not see advertising as they do on their personal Facebook account.
See also: Microsoft is launching a campaign against Google’s Gmail (again)
We also know that Facebook will launch a mobile app so that a company’s managers and employees can stay in constant contact and coordinate all the necessary tasks.
1. Whatever you share or store in your Facebook work account will only be visible to your colleagues at the company. All messages and files will be accessible to anyone else within the company, unless separate groups have been set up for different departments. It seems Facebook Work will also offer different privacy options, including an “only me” option.
2. When you set up your Facebook Work account, you will be able to connect it to your personal Facebook account and switch between the two, although your username and password will not be shared with your boss (of course).
3. As for the information that will appear on your work profile, it will be provided by your employer: your name, job title and contact details. So, in the end, creating these profiles will become a new responsibility for the Human Resources department.
We don’t know the exact plans for the future of this service, which we imagine will eventually offer some kind of premium option, as Google already does, along with other services that have tried to topple email and instant messaging as a form of internal communication within companies.
In any case, one question has been answered: before long, logging into Facebook from the office probably won’t be frowned upon.
Further reading
Featured image: Mindaugas Danys, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
