Workplace is an online

collaborative software Collaborative software or groupware is application software designed to help people working on a common task to attain their goals. One of the earliest definitions of groupware is "intentional group processes plus software to support them." Regar ...

tool developed by

Meta Platforms Meta Platforms, Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Meta owns and operates several prominent social media platforms and communication services, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads ...

. Its features include instant messaging, file sharing, and video and audio conferencing. It was announced on 14 May 2024 that Meta would be sunsetting Workplace in 2026.

History

Workplace was first announced on January 14, 2015. It launched in beta as Facebook at Work before officially launching in October 2016. Free accounts were discontinued as of February 2021. Workplace for Good was launched in June 2018 to provide a free version of Workplace for registered non-profits and staff of educational institutions. In October 2018, Workplace announced the launch of Safety Check. Originally developed by Facebook engineers after the 2011 Japanese tsunami, Safety Check for Workplace allows organizations to identify employees who may be affected by a crisis and send and monitor responses. Safety Check has been used by

Delta Air Lines Delta Air Lines, Inc. is a Major airlines of the United States, major airline in the United States headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, operating nine hubs, with Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport being its ...

(during Hurricane Florence and the Hokkaido earthquake). As of May 2021, there were 7 million paying users. In May 2024, Meta announced that it would be phasing out Workplace and shutting it down completely in 2026.

Functions

While Workplace accounts are set up and run separately from Facebook accounts, Workplace uses much of Facebook's underlying technology. Workplace uses

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

to rank information in a user's news feed and make recommendations, while 'downranking' less relevant information. Workplace data is stored across 12 Facebook-owned and operated data centers.

Reception

PC Mag described it as "Facebook if your employer restricted membership to only your coworkers and bosses" and concluded "Workplace is what an organization makes of it".

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