The American social media giant Facebook’s Workplace business software has reached 7 million paid subscribers marking a growth of about 40 percent in a year as the COVID-19 accelerated a remote work trend across the globe.
The Workplace tool, which companies can use as an internal social network to communicate with their employees, still trails behind top rivals such as Teams which its developer Microsoft says now has nearly 145 million daily active users.
The social media giant said it has notched up some big users like Starbucks, Virgin Atlantic, Walmart, Telefonica, BT, Booking.com, Deliveroo, AstraZeneca and Save the Children.
“We built Workplace as an internal version of Facebook to run our own company, and it was so useful we started letting other organizations use it too,” Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said in a post.
From about a year ago the number of paid subscribers in the Workplace has increased by 40 percent, Mr. Zuckerberg added. The software had 5 million paid users in May 2020.
Last year, Facebook announced a global alliance with Deloitte to help companies use Workplace software to meet the challenges of remote working.
As the offices were closed due to the outbreak of COVID-19, companies shifted to having employees tend to jobs online when possible. In light of this trend use of video and collaboration platforms hosted by companies including Zoom, Slack, Microsoft, and Google surged within a very short period.
As some firms plan to return to office life, it is likely that “hybrid” work models that mix remote and on-site work will become a norm at businesses and the demand for tools like Workplace will increase further.
