Facebook to launch ad-free business version

MENLO PARK (California) — Facebook wants you to use Facebook at work — and make your company pay for access.

A new office version of the social network, called Workplace, becomes widely available next Monday (Oct 17). The platform is ad-free and not connected to users’ existing Facebook accounts. Workplace is meant to help employees collaborate with one another on products, listen to their bosses speak on Facebook Live, and post updates about their work in the News Feed.

“The new global and mobile workplace isn’t about closed-door meetings or keeping people separated by title, department or geography. Organisations are stronger and more productive when everyone comes together,” Facebook said.

The product will give Facebook a new stream of revenue to supplement advertising on its free social network. Workplace is designed to compete with services from Microsoft and Slack Technologies to provide a controlled setting online for collaborative conversations on the job. Microsoft, for example, is in the process of acquiring LinkedIn to add social elements to its business tools.

Employers using Workplace will be charged a monthly fee of US$3 (S$4) per employee for the first 1,000 monthly active users, US$2 a head from 1,001 to 10,000 users, and US$1 per worker beyond that, Facebook said on Tuesday. By comparison, Slack, a messaging and group call service, costs US$6.67 per user per month for a standard version. Workplace is free for non-profit organisations and educational institutions.

Organisations have used Workplace, previously called Facebook at Work, on an invitation-only basis for the past 18 months. Facebook says more than 1,000 places use it, up from 450 six months ago. They include the non-profit Oxfam, the Royal Bank of Scotland, soup maker Campbell’s, and the vacation rental site Booking.com. The tool itself, though, has been in the works for much longer; it is based on an internal service that the company’s own employees have been using for almost as long as Facebook has existed. AGENCIES