Facebook’s ‘Workplace’ Targets Slack With Pricing Plan, New Features

Facebook At Work has received an overhaul, a new name and will be available to anyone through a subscription service starting today.

The roll out of ‘Workplace’ was announced yesterday. Until now Workplace was limited to about 1,000 organizations using the beta ‘Facebook at Work’ program competing directly with Slack and Microsoft’s Yammer in the social-at-work category.

“At Facebook, we’ve had an internal version of our app to help run our company for many years. We’ve seen that just as Facebook keeps you connected to friends and family, it can do the same with coworkers. We started testing a version of Facebook for the workplace with a few other organizations over a year ago” said Facebook in the announcement.

“We’ve been amazed by the breadth of organizations who’ve embraced Workplace — from a shipping company that can now connect with their ship crews using Live video, to a bank that now uses Workplace instead of fax machines and newsletters to share updates with its distributed bank branches.”

The primary features of the service include all the basics of Facebook including a news feed, group chat and Facebook Live. The value add here is that now Workplace offers additional features like an analytics dashboard and opportunities for custom integration with company’s existing IT systems.

“We’re also announcing Multi-Company Groups, shared spaces that allow employees from different organizations to work together, to extend collaboration beyond your company in a safe and secure way.”

The new offering is available ranging from $1-$3 per employee depending on the size of the organization, though companies will only be charged for their active users.  Also any custom integration will require an engagement with one of Facebook’s Workplace Partners.