TIME apps

Facebook Wants to Make You More Productive at Work

'Facebook at Work' is designed to boost productivity, rather than sap it

Facebook released an app for the workplace on Wednesday, offering a handful of test users access to a new site that looks like Facebook and feels like Facebook, but with a few key alterations.

The app, called “Facebook at Work,” breaks off co-workers into a standalone social network, Re/code reports. There, a team can share posts and images appropriate for the workplace. Users can also rest assured that personal posts, such as those polaroid pictures of your preschool class, won’t crop up on the professional feed unless a user feels a need to volunteer that sort of information.

To ensure workers have open conversations, the Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook will jettison its ad-based revenue model, stripping out ads from the site and assuring users that no one outside of the work network—neither marketers nor Facebook—will view the content.

The app is designed to offer an alternative form of communication to email, the Wall Street Journal reports, merging the pile of inbox messages into a continuous stream of communication. It also will pose a direct challenge to a growing number of work-oriented social networking sites, such as Microsoft’s Yammer and IBM’s Connections.

See Life Inside Facebook’s Headquarters

Tap to read full story

Your browser is out of date. Please update your browser at http://update.microsoft.com


YOU BROKE TIME.COM!

Dear TIME Reader,

As a regular visitor to TIME.com, we are sure you enjoy all the great journalism created by our editors and reporters. Great journalism has great value, and it costs money to make it. One of the main ways we cover our costs is through advertising.

The use of software that blocks ads limits our ability to provide you with the journalism you enjoy. Consider turning your Ad Blocker off so that we can continue to provide the world class journalism you have become accustomed to.

The TIME Team