Social Buzz: Facebook announced the commercial launch of Workplace

With Facebook boasting 1.13 billion daily active users on average for June 2016 it should come as no surprise that the 12-year-old social network is seeking to dominant in the corporate world.

On Oct. 10 Facebook announced the commercial launch of Workplace by Facebook. This tool is for companies and will allow workers to chat and collaborate with one another. Formally known as Facebook at Work, Facebook indicates they started testing the product over a year ago.

They say more than 1,000 organizations around the world use Workplace with the top five countries being India, the U.S., Norway, U.K. and France.

Now, Facebook has made Workplace available to any company or organization that wants to use it — for a fee. The breakdown starts with a three-month trial period and after that it will start charging a monthly fee that will range from $1 to $3 for every active user depending on the amount of monthly active users.

This fee will give Facebook a new source of revenue besides advertising.

There are plenty of competitors in the business-messaging market, but Workplace may be a serious threat because so many workers already use its website and mobile platforms in their personal lives.

Another advantage Facebook has entering this market is familiarity. Workplace will offer the same look, feel and features as the Facebook users are used to.

Facebook’s platform will offer space for group discussion, a personalized News Feed, and voice and video calling. Facebook says Workplace will also offer the ability to share documents, chat privately, and post and share the not-to-be-forgotten live videos.

The service is modeled after Facebook’s internal corporate network. Like its social product, users will open to a News Feed with posts ranked based on Facebook algorithms that take into account previous activity on the Workplace account.

Facebook documents describing the product also outline enterprise-grade security, administration tools and a gray color scheme rather than their flagship blue.

There will be no connection to an employee’s personal Facebook account, but companies will have the ability to gather data on employees’ activity in Workplace.

Workplace marks the first time Facebook has charged a fee for its services.

Like many things social media, time will tell if companies take to the platform for business-messaging.