Social media giant, Facebook, Inc., on its first global summit, announced the growth of its business oriented social network platform, Workplace. As per sources, the company claims that Workplace, a rival to collaboration services like Salesforce, Slack and Microsoft, has been a hit with businesses and that its active users have doubled in the past 10 months.
According to The Straits Times, Julien Codorniou, VP of Workplace by Facebook said the platform was initially targeted towards big companies as to serve businesses with a private social network and has seemingly grown in recent times.
Compared to Facebook’s main social network, Workplace offers a different operation, as the platform is intending to connect everyone in a company, from counter or warehouse workers to chief executives, Codorniou said.
Reportedly, business giants such as Walmart, Delta, Starbucks, Virgin Atlantic and Spotify currently use Facebook’s Workplace in their daily operations. Companies apparently have to pay US$3 each month per user for using the platform’s services.
For the record, Workplace began as an internal collaboration platform within Facebook and was later launched as its own business in 2016. The company is currently headquartered in London and offers around 30,000 companies with a private social network platform.
Sources claim that the conference was used to announce Workplace’s newly updated features, which includes a version of Facebook’s safety check feature designed to determine the status and well-being of workers in the company at an event of a disaster or tragedy. Workplace also introduced a new group voice or video chats feature for non-employees who work outside a company.
Stating current requirements, Codorniou said that millennials currently demand information regarding their employers and the culture of the company and with Workplace in the picture, workers, irrespective of their level, can give feedbacks to top company executives, further bringing a small-company feel to big operations.
