Anand Mokashi – 
The social space giant has launched Facebook Workplace (www.workplace.fb.com), which allows people in an organisation to connect everyone and turn ideas into action, through group discussion, personalised news feed and voice and video calling, work together and get more done.
Workplace is an ad-free space, separate from your personal Facebook account.
Workplace was released released recently to selected organisations in the world, as a beta-trial. Now, encouraged by the positive response from over 1000 companies that are currently using this platform, Facebook has announced that it has made the app available to all.
Good interaction
Using this app, an employee can interact with colleagues across the world in real time, implement a virtual discussion in a Group or ‘attend’ a presentation made on the other side of the globe, on ‘Facebook Live.’
“Users have created nearly 100,000 groups and the top five countries using Workplace are India, the US, Norway, UK and France,” Facebook said in a statement.
“We are announcing that Workplace will now be available to any company or organisation that wants to use it.”
Among the global users of Workplace are Danone, Starbucks and Booking.com, international non-profits such as Oxfam and regional leaders like the Government Technology Agency of Singapore.
Paradigm shift
“It’s a whole new paradigm in employee engagement! This platform reflects the perfect synergy of people driving technology,” S N Subrahmanyam, Deputy Managing Director and President, Larsen & Toubro (India), said.
Facebook also announced ‘Multi-Company Groups,’ that are virtual ‘shared spaces’ that allow employees from different organisations to work together and extend collaboration beyond their companies in a safe and secure manner.
Workplace by Facebook is free to use for Charities and not-for-profit organisations.
Active Users
For other businesses, Facebook offers a three-month free trial period after which they can choose from a tiered pricing model starting from US$3 per active user per month.
“The more active users an organisation has, the less they pay per user. So, US$3 per user is for the first 1000 monthly active users, US$2 for 1001-10,000 monthly active users and US$1 for 10,000+ monthly active users,” a Facebook official said.
While it is too early to comment about its efficacy, knowing Facebook’s ability to intuitively understand and deliver a product that the market so dearly wants, Workplace to be a winner-in-the making.
Anand Mokashi is an IT Lecturer, Consultant and Digital Media Specialist with a passion for all things online. He runs the Facebook group of Amateur astronomy lovers (https://www.facebook.com/groups/ilavip/) and the website www.astronomyhuble.com. Email: anand_mokashi@consultant.com
