'Facebook at Work' for Professionals to Launch in a Few Months
Facebook will be launching its professional version Facebook at Work in a few months, the social media giant's spokeswoman Vanessa Chan announced recently.
Facebook at Work will look similar to the traditional Facebook, but it will be made specifically for business and professional employees. It will also have most of the features available in Facebook, but games will not be included in the package, according to a Reuters report cited by TechSpot.
"I would say 95 percent of what we developed for Facebook is also adopted for Facebook at Work," TechSpot quotes Facebook's director of global platform partnerships Julien Codorniou's statement to Reuters.
Aside from that, Codorniou also said they will be designing exclusive products and security tools for Facebook at Work, Business Today reports.
Users of Facebook a Work will have separate profiles from the traditional Facebook. That way, people from work will not be able to see their posts on their personal account, and vice versa. This is, of course, subject to the user's privacy settings, the report explains.
Facebook has spent the last year testing Facebook at Work with more than 300 selected companies under an invite-only system. The service will still be free after its official launch, but the company plans to charge a small monthly fee for analytics, customer support, and other premium features, the report details.
Heineken, Stella and Dot, and the Royal Bank of Scotland are among the companies that participated in the beta testing of Facebook at Work. In an interview with Reuters, French resort firm Club Med's chief marketing and digital officer Anne Browaeys-Level said they are planning to offer the service to its 13,000 workers through summer next year, the report relays.
When it is finally launched, Facebook at Work will compete with other companies striving for the top spot among social networks for the enterprise market. Its major rivals in that area will include Yammer, Salesforce Chatter, Jive, and Socialcast.