“Facebook At Work” Allows Businesses To Create Their Own Social Networks

Facebook has unveiled a new app for iOS and Android called “Work”, along with a version of “Facebook At Work” via its main website, which allows businesses to create their own social networks amongst their employees. Although the app is currently being offered for free to a select group of pilot testers, it’s likely that a wider release is soon to be announced. There are many players who are trying to take hold of the “enterprise social network” space, and this latest news puts Facebook in line to compete with Microsoft’s Yammer, Slack, Convo, Socialcast and others.

With Facebook’s product, employers will be able to create a separate login for their employees to use with their “Work” accounts, or users can choose to link these up with their existing Facebook profile to access everything in a single location.

Lars Rasmussen, the engineering director at Facebook who is heading up this project, explained in an interview with TechCrunch that the company has already been running tests of the service with “a very small set” of external businesses around the world. The new limited release is intended to conduct further testing of the product.

Rasmussen further explained that “Work” has actually been in development for the past 10 years, as it is based on what Facebook’s own employees have been using to communicate with each other, plan meetings and share documents. He said that the company is confident that it will find a place in this market even though it’s a crowded space, based on the fact that Facebook has already been using the product for a long time, coupled with the social network’s general popularity.

“Facebook at Work’s strength is that we’ve spent ten years and incorporated feedback from 1 billion active users,” said Rasmussen. “All of that is embedded now in the same product but adapted for different use cases.”

However, because the product isn’t yet widely available, a lot of questions remain, such as how Facebook will price the app, whether or not it will monetize the service through ads, and how third-party apps will work. Reports indicate that, for now, Facebook Platform has been disabled on the Work product, meaning no ads or apps. This could certainly change in the future.

Facebook’s wide popularity could prove to be a massive advantage over its competitors. Many employers are met with resistance from their employees when trying out new collaborative software, based on the sometimes steep learning curve that is involved. With Facebook’s great familiarity, the new product could provide a way to collaborate without the need to learn how to use a new piece of software.

Although many details are yet to be shared, Rasmussen did suggest that additional features will most likely be added to the product. While users can share documents in the current version, in-app editing is not currently possible, but may be added in the future. “The set of features are identical to personal Facebook, but just to get it out sooner, we’ve disabled the Platform so the APIs that third parties work with are not there, but we are keen to turn it back on,” Rasmussen explained to TechCrunch. “Hopefully in the future other enterprise tools will integrate with Facebook at Work.”