Workplace is the latest solution developed by Facebook for businesses. It looks very familiar because of its strong similitudes with Facebook’s interface. Given that Facebook has more than 1.5B of users, it gives Workplace a serious advantage over its main competitors, as Slack or Trello.
The main objective of this new platform is to facilitate collaborative work, to connect people in the company and to accelerate communication. Each organization has its own network internally. Workplace is an ad-free space, which is expected to be used mainly on mobiles and tablets.
As previously mentioned, the user interface is really similar to Facebook: profile, personalised News Feed, group discussion, instant messaging (Work Chat), voice and video calling. The only difference is that we do not become “friends” with people but instead we follow their news. During the beta testing phase, Facebook has observed and reports that this resemblance greatly favors the adoption of the solution by employees.
Workplace enables users to create groups to collaboratively work on projects. These groups are similar to the ones found on Facebook but people are not grouped together by interest but by professional projects. Groups can be used internally, but it is also possible to create “cross-enterprise” groups.
To reassure users and to respect their privacy, Workplace emphasizes that Facebook’s personal accounts and Workpalce’s accounts are totally distinct. Moreover, the data that are shared on Workplace remain the company’s property and do not belong to Facebook.
In terms of pricing, Workplace costs $3 per user for companies with less than 1,000 monthly active users, $2 for companies with between 1,001 and 10,000 active users and 1$ thereafter. Workplace’s main competitor is Slack, which offers a free version and a premium version at 7$ per month per user.
The first results are really promising and all the companies that used the solution during the beta version phase are really happy with it and state that they will recommend it.
What do you think about this new solution? Have you ever used any collaborative workspace?
