Facebook for Work officially launches as ‘Workplace’

After a few years in private beta, Facebook’s Slack and Yammer competitor, ‘Workplace’ officially launched yesterday. The private social networks for work is available to companies, nonprofits and educational institutions of any size and is already being utilized by quite a few organizations around the world.

According to the announcement by Facebook, more than 1,000 organizations around the world are currently using Workplace. With the public release, the company hopes features like Messenger chat, Facebook Live and Groups will become indispensable to companies, rather than a daily distraction. With your Workplace account being completely separate from Facebook account, the discussions should already be a little bit more focused. In addition to some of the familiar features, Workplace has a few new corporate add-ons like dashboard analytics, single sign-on and better IT integration to make it more office-friendly. There’s also a separate Work Chat app for iOS and Android so employees can keep in touch while they’re out of the office.

Facebook is also rolling out “Multi-Company Groups” which allow employees from different organizations to work together without using their personal Facebook accounts, as well as a Workplace Partner Program that lets large companies serve as ambassadors. New companies can get a free three-month trial period for signing up, but after that Facebook Workplace has a tiered pricing structure that costs $3 per month per user for companies with less than 1,000 active users, or as low as $1 per month for companies with over 10,000 users. For nonprofits and Educational Institutions, Workplace is completely free.

Is your office ready to trade in Slack for Workplace? Or will the service be perfect for companies which haven’t yet adopted a service such as this? Let us know your thoughts!