Social networking giant gives LinkedIn some competition

Jan 15, 2015 11:06 GMT  ·  By

Facebook is out with a new business-oriented application, currently available only for iOS platforms and on the web, offering convenient ways to stay on top of new developments, collaboration features, a chatting platform, and more.

Available to people who have set up a work account through their employer, Facebook at Work gives users more flexibility in connecting and collaborating with people on work-related tasks.

Social productivity

According to the social networking giant, the software lets you “stay up-to-date with a News Feed that shows what's new and relevant at your company,” establish groups with colleagues, send messages back and forth, link work and personal accounts together to stay logged in on both, share documents (currently without editing features), etc.

Engineering director Lars Rasmussen, who is in charge of the project, says “Facebook at Work’s strength is that we’ve spent ten years and incorporated feedback from 1 billion active users. All of that is embedded now in the same product but adapted for different use cases.”

Rasmussen reveals to TechCrunch that Facebook’s staffers themselves have been using the platform internally to stay productive for the past decade. It was only logical to create a consumer-centric product out of it.

LinkedIn, watch out!

Despite not officially calling it a LinkedIn competitor, Facebook knows it is now competing with the business-laden network. Especially since Facebook at Work also has a dedicated web interface (in your browser). The sheer number of Facebook accounts will be enough to chip away at LinkedIn’s market share considerably.

However, it’s also worth noting that Facebook’s platform seems to be more of an internal communication tool than a platform aimed at connecting businesses. Only time will tell how Facebook at Work will evolve. Currently, it doesn’t look too ambitious.