Facebook is secretly working on a new website called "Facebook at Work" (Facebook at Work), with the aim of "setting foot" in professional offices around the globe and thus competing directly with LinkedIn, but also Google and Microsoft.
The largest social network in the world, with over one billion users, is designing its new service in order to enable its users to talk to their colleagues, make new business contacts, collaborate in the creation of business documents, etc. according to exclusive information from the "Financial Times".
The new website will look like the main Facebook, but will allow users to strictly separate their personal "profile" (with their personal photos and videos or their political views) from their professional "profile".
The employees of the social network themselves have used such a professional subnet for their daily work on Facebook and at some point they raised the issue of extending this service externally to all users.
The development of the new service started quietly last year and is already in the testing phase with companies, as the date of the official announcement of the initiative is probably approaching, according to the British newspaper.
In the first phase, "Facebook at Work" is expected to "steal" market share from the purely professional social network LinkedIn, which has about 90 million active users per month and is the main "tool" of professional networking internationally. But Facebook's professional service could also compete with services like Google Drive or Microsoft Office and Outlook.
In order for Facebook to penetrate the business community as a work tool, it must gain the trust of businesses and their executives, who often conduct confidential conversations online and exchange sensitive commercial information that they would not want to see leaked. . Moreover, Facebook has repeatedly been criticized for abusing the personal data of its users.
In addition, many companies still ban the use of Facebook to their employees so that their productivity does not fall, so they must first be convinced that Facebook will indeed be used for work and not for gossip and gossip.
Initially at least "Facebook at Work" is expected to be free in order to gain users. Facebook generates almost all of its advertising revenue and manages to attract more, more users.
Facebook declined to comment on the post.