Letting people on a payroll to log to Facebook in the workplace has constantly been a debatable issue. In fact it was normal practice for organizations to prohibit or block Facebook on work desktops asserting that it just served as a diversion.  Now, Facebook has started testing a portable app for companies. The New Facebook at Work app allows workers to connect and communicate with each other and partners via Facebook instruments.

A study by desktop services supplier HCL Technologies in 2011 found that 50% of laborers had been prohibited using Facebook and other social media platform in their business locales, because of company’s’ anxieties that their business notorieties could be questioned.

Nevertheless, nowadays, it appears that the bigger danger to a business’ notoriety is not having an online networking visibility. Numerous organizations now hire individuals to use Facebook and other informal communities to advance the activities of their enterprise to the world.

Besides, a study conducted last year by Samsung Electronics uncovered that British workers are the most inclined in Europe to overlook work environment limitations on online networking, with two in five confessing to logging in on Facebook at work despite the fact that they are aware it is not allowed.

Trying to give tackle this conflict, Facebook is testing Facebook at Work – a variant of the social media platform that is targeting only the use I within a firm. Facebook at Work, accessible on iOS and Android, has the same look as Facebook and has the same features, including News Feed, Groups and chat. In any case, the data shared among laborers is just available to individuals in the organization.

The company stated in a public release that Facebook at Work was developed solely for utilization inside an organization. That implies users’ Facebook at Work data is sheltered, secure, private and totally separate from their individual Facebook account.

While in the introductory trial period, Facebook at Work will only be accessible small number of companies and display ads or collect information about clients. Nonetheless, the organization has not uncovered how it plans to market the application later on.

The new venture places Facebook in immediate rivalry with other platforms aiming the business market – including Yammer, which Microsoft purchased for $1.2bn (£788m) in 2012, Jive and Huddle and Linkedin.

Yammer works a “freemium” type of platform, whereby some of the options are accessible free of charge but organizations need to pay a membership for access to the full item. Jive and Huddle both offer a membership-based business model.

Image Source: Digital Trends