Facebook's expansion into enterprise software is being built in London, not Menlo Park
No, not the Facebook people use every day, but an entirely new and separate version of the site named "Facebook at Work" that can be customised by different companies.
It has taken over a year to build this new enterprise version of the site.
The man heading up Facebook at Work is Julien Codorniou, who previously led the company's platform partnerships team.
"I used to work at Microsoft, I have a passion for enterprise software," Codorniou says. "When it was the time to start building a proper growth team for Facebook at Work, when the product was ready to be tested, I volunteered to do it. When it became clear that we had a very nice opportunity there, I decided to go full-time and build the global team."
And that team is, unusually for Facebook, based in London. It's the first major Facebook product that wasn't made in the US. Codorniou mentions Facebook's offices in New York and Seattle as other places where the company works on products outside of its Menlo Park HQ, but says that "we wanted to see if we could build a significant initiative for Facebook outside of the US."
Facebook at Work is a natural development for the company, as employees have been using their own site for work for years. But the rise of enterprise software like Slack and Microsoft-owned Yammer shows that people want a more high-tech version for workplace communication rather than just plain old email.
Kyle McGinn, the head of product at Facebook at Work, says there is an audience of 3 billion people who use enterprise software. That's why the development of Facebook at Work is such a key product for the company.
Of course, there's no guarantee that Facebook is going to be able to bring Facebook at Work to the entire enterprise suite. Lots of different products perform lots of different functions, and Facebook at Work can't beat them all. Perhaps the biggest competitor is work chat app Slack, which has around 3 million daily active users.
Is Slack worried about the threat of Facebook at Work? CEO Stewart Butterfield said last year that "the brand 'Facebook' is not, I think, well suited to being used for work. The product sounds like it might be really useful at a really large company. Obviously, if it's a seven person company, there's not much point in creating a profile."
It's a totally separate site
Facebook at Work is not a sub-section of Facebook. Instead, it's a different site that requires a separate login.
"The two products are totally separated," Codorniou says. "If you want to talk with your family or friends, if you want to like a page, watch celebrities' live videos, you have to use Facebook. If you get to work and you need to get the job done and collaborate and communicate with your colleagues, it's Facebook at Work."
Once you've logged into Facebook at Work, you'll notice that the colour scheme is different to normal Facebook. The blue is gone, and in its place is a more muted grey colour.
"The banner at the top is a different colour, you've got your company logo, the modules down the right-hand side are different than in consumer Facebook. We've tested that, we know it provides the right balance of similarity," McGinn says.
There's also a mobile app for Facebook at Work, just like consumer Facebook, as well as a work-focused version of the Messenger app called Workchat. It can do text messages, voice calls, as well as video calls. "Some companies pay a lot of money for this sort of thing," says Codorniou.
Company CEOs can broadcast updates on Facebook at Work, and all employees who follow them will see them.
"You've got CEOs checking in on their morning jog, talking about the stock price," McGinn explains. "They used to send out an email every quarter and they had no idea how many people read it, or what they thought of it. Now they can send out an email on this morning jog and they can see the number of people who have seen it, the reactions, they get comments, they interact with everyone across the whole company."
Yes, reactions. They're the smiley faces, hearts, or angry faces on main Facebook, and they're on the work version of the service too. In fact, Facebook uses reactions as an example of how fast it can move when it comes to adding features to its enterprise site. Reactions shipped to Facebook at Work one day after they were launched on the main site.
Codorniou estimates that 95% of the features built for standard Facebook will eventually make it to the enterprise site.
Some of the things that won't make it onto Facebook at Work include games.
"When you talk to a CIO, it's pretty obvious after a few minutes that they don't want the gaming platform on which you can play 'Candy Crush'," says Codorniou. "Advertising, many things that we launched for consumer Facebook like the social graph - they don't want that for enterprise."
Facebook groups are going to be really useful
It sounds like most work within the platform will take place in groups for different parts of the company. Here's one example from McGinn of how groups on Facebook at Work can function:
"[It's] a business card application process. We've got one of our customers who took a really slow process that meant filling in a form, sending it to your manager, getting your manager to sign the form, sending it on to a department to get printed, a two-week turnaround.
What they've done is they've created a group called 'business card applications'. You post into that group with what you want on the front of your business card, you tag your manager, your manager presses like, and the admin of that group treats that as an authorisation, and they're on your desk the next day."
Companies can't just sign up, pay money, and start using Facebook at Work, right now.
Access to the enterprise site is being strictly limited to fewer than 500 companies at present, although Codorniou says that new companies are being added at a rate of one per day.
"If you want to try Facebook at Work, we need a good case for it," he says. "We received more than 60,000 requests."
Once a company is signed up, Facebook checks in with them around every two weeks to make sure they're getting on with the service.
There are some interesting companies testing out the platform
"We started with RBS for two reasons," explains Codorniou. "There is a new management team. They're thinking about RBS 2.0 to create a different culture in the company and attract young talent. They wanted new tools. The timing was perfect."
"It was surprising that we launched our first big client as a bank in Europe owned by the government. You can imagine all the things we learned in the process and all the discussions we had."
If you're a big company with existing enterprise software, why migrate to Facebook at Work? Well, for one, there's an automatic translation feature that displays messages from around the world in the language you selected. That makes working with international offices much easier.
And Facebook at Work also has a big emphasis on mobile, just like the consumer site. Codorniou mentions a company in Africa that's testing the service which has around 50% of its employees using it on mobile phones.
"We want to see what happens when you connect people who have never been connected to the rest of the company before," he says.
But it's not just international corporations trying out the service. Codorniou said: "We have companies with five people using Facebook at Work. We have a construction company in the UK, 25 people. People working on buildings, they use Facebook at Work. They take one picture of what they've been working on every day, they post that in the group, shared with the HQ. The HQ is five people."
The danger with any enterprise product is that a company signs up and then employees simply fail to use it. But Codorniou says the CEOs of both Club Med and Canadian Tyre had never used Facebook before signing up to the enterprise version, however "in three weeks they became addicted to using Facebook at Work. I don't think you need a lot of training."
But you probably can't use it yet
Facebook says it's keeping Facebook at Work invite-only for now, but there are plans to open it up "in the coming months." Important features like Facebook Live and a developer platform are also in the works, the company says.
"We also want to build an ecosystem of apps and partners on top of Facebook at Work. This is something that is being built right now, it's one of the priorities for us," notes Codorniou.