Facebook at Work is Coming – New Images Show How it Will Work

In the second half of last year, Facebook announced it was working on a new project called 'Facebook at Work'. The concept is exactly as it sounds – Facebook at Work will provide a contained, internal network for your business, enabling companies to use the familiar Facebook interface as their platform for work related interactions.

Initially, people were confused by the detail of the project – Facebook at Work exists separately from your personal Facebook graph, it's a separate app and a separate platform for employees and work-related discussion. Businesses will have a contained work space, where employees will have to be logged in to interact – with their personal Facebook accounts and discussions kept out of the process. In this sense, it's not exactly Facebook in the workplace as some have suggested, it's not likely to lead to a mass in wasted time because employees will be caught up responding to posts from friends in amongst work-related content.

Facebook at Work will go head-to-head with established industry platforms like Slack and Microsoft's Yammer, a whole new market for The Social Network to capitalize on. And now, the latest news on the Facebook at Work front is coming, with Re/code reporting that a freemium version of the platform will likely be available before the year is out.

Ahead of this, BuzzFeed has today published several new images of Facebook at Work, showing what the app looks like and how it will function.

(image via BuzzFeed)

As you can see, it looks exactly like Facebook, but contained within the work environment. Messages about company updates and collaborations will come through in your feed, enabling users to stay on top of internal matters through an interface with which they're already familiar. This is a key element of Facebook's pitch – by adopting Facebook at Work, businesses will be able to save a heap of money on training as incoming employees will already know how the system works and how they can communicate via the platform.

(image via BuzzFeed)

The app, which is based on the communications network Facebook uses internally, is already being endorsed by some major brands, as noted by Re/code:

"Heineken, for example, has been testing the product with just 40 of its top executives, but plans to expand Facebook at Work to all 550 U.S. employees by the end of September. Linio, a Latin American e-commerce company, is expanding the product internally from 200 to 2,000 employees by the end of the month."

Given its ease of functionality and familiarity, you can see how such a system would be appealing to business, and could quickly become a major player in the market. The issue many businesses will have is in perception – Facebook is seen as a time waster, and companies will be hesitant to enable any connection with Facebook till they can be sure their employees won't be using it as increased license to access their personal Facebook profiles throughout the working day.

(image via BuzzFeed)

That said, given the ubiquity of social media in today's communications landscape, it's pretty accepted that most people are on Facebook, and most people are active on social platforms. As time goes on, it's increasingly likely that social media platforms will be seen as a positive influence on employee behavior and productivity, as well as on the wider marketing efforts of a business. Given this, and given that the next generation of employees on will have grown up with social as part of their communications DNA, Facebook at Work is likely to become a big player in the market.

Soon, you might be on Facebook a whole lot more, moving Zuckerberg and Co closer to realizing their mission of total dominance of online attention.

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Original source: Facebook at Work is Coming – New Images Show How it Will Work.
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