‘Facebook at Work will use revenue model based on company size’

Facebook plans to charge for the version of its platform specifically for the workplace. The business site Facebook at Work would charge a price depending on the number of employees of a company using the functionality.

The Information reports this based on a conversation with director Julien Codorniou of Facebook at Work. The idea is that companies pay per monthly active user instead of one specific price per company. Facebook would also offer integration with other Saas services, such as Asana, TechCrunch reports.

Facebook at Work should provide a work news stream with posts from colleagues to share ideas and “shoot” tasks. That makes it similar to Convo, Salesforce Chatter, and Yammer. On the other hand, it also resembles Slack which provides an environment for chats, audio and video messages, and for file sharing. Facebook at Work will use people’s profiles on the public social networking site.

The price per user has not yet been announced. There are now about 400 beta testers who have been using the system for free for a while and they will reportedly get the service for free for a few months as the paid public variant opens its virtual doors.

Users do not need to set up a personal Facebook account for the service: it should also be possible to set up a separate account. The first rumors about Facebook at Work appeared at the end of 2014. At that time it was still thought that the company might not ask for money for the service.