While it seemed like a promising side-offering at one stage, evidently, Meta has decided that an enterprise platform is not a part of its future development roadmap.
Today, Meta has confirmed that it’s shutting down its Workplace platform, which is essentially a version of Facebook built for internal communications, and sealed off from the wider web.
Originally announced back in 2015 as “Facebook at Work”, then publicly launched a year later, Workplace provides all of the usual Facebook functions on an internal system, with the idea being that it can reduce the training time for internal collaboration tools, by providing professionals with the Facebook interface that they’re already familiar with.
And it has been relatively popular. Workplace reached seven million paying users in 2021, up 40% year-over-year at the time. But seemingly, that momentum has now slowed, while Meta has also undertaken a significant review of its operations, in order to cut costs.
And within that, Workplace is now getting cut.
As per Meta:
“We are discontinuing Workplace from Meta so we can focus on building AI and metaverse technologies that we believe will fundamentally reshape the way we work. Over the next two years, we will provide our Workplace customers the option to transition to Zoom’s Workvivo product, Meta’s only preferred migration partner.”
So if you’re using Workplace, you’ve got a while, but it is on the way out, and will eventually be removed entirely.
Which means that you’ll have to learn a new internal communications system. Sorry.
For Meta, a key benefit of the shift will be that it will no longer have to convince workplaces that it’s safe to use, and won’t risk their proprietary data, which had seemingly been a key impediment to broader take-up.
With various news headlines highlighting its past data usage issues, Meta had a tough time, in some cases, getting enterprise customers across the line. But now, it won’t have to, while it also won’t need to support the framework of a separate enterprise system, leaving it free to focus on its other projects, as per its announcement.
The reported timeline for the deprecation of Workplace, according to TechCrunch, is that the platform will remain in operation till September 2025, then it will move to read-only mode until May 2026. Then, sometime after, it will be shut down completely.
So again, you have time, but Workplace is headed for the great Silicon Valley in the sky.
But then again, by 2026, the metaverse will be the key medium for all of our communications anyway. Right?