While social media users have spent the last few months posting angry statuses about Facebook’s mishandling of their data, the company has been quietly building out its enterprise platform, Workplace.
Now, it seems like Workplace might actually work: Yesterday, Facebook signed Nestlé, which has 240k employees, as its newest mega-client.
Microsoft Teams, Twist, and Crew all make popular workplace messaging platforms, but Slack is the market leader after buying Hipchat last year.
They all have slightly different features: Slack targets multitaskers with infinite integrations, Crew caters to shift workers with scheduling tools.
But Facebook, desperate for new revenue streams after putting out PR dumpster fires for months, is designed for all the average Joes and Janes who are already hooked on the ’Book.
Since it was launched as ‘Facebook for Work’ in 2016, Facebook has borrowed recognizable features from its social network (News Feed, Groups, Live Video) to build out a workplace product that feels familiar to everyone from execs to contractors.
The ’Book, which counted 30k orgs as customers in 2017, still has a long way to go to catch Slack (500k+ customers) and Microsoft Teams (329k customers).
But Nestlé, Walmart (2.2m employees), and Starbucks (240k employees) are all customers, proving that some of the world’s largest companies have found a way to make Workplace work.