Look out, Slack. Facebook’s “Workplace” is now here in full. On Monday, October 10, the social media giant announced the availability of Workplace “to any company or organization that wants to use it.”
The platform — which matches Facebook’s design and offers a News Feed-style timeline for the workplace called “Work Feed,” alongside Groups, and Messenger features — will be available on a per user monthly payment scheme. This marks a change from Facebook’s earlier plans to offer the basic At Work platform for free and charge a premium based on additional features, The Information reports.
According to Facebook At Work director Julien Codorniou, the company decided to change the payment model based on its confidence that the platform “would get employees engaged.” Codorniou did not disclose how much the monthly subscription would cost.
From a user perspective, Facebook At Work allows you to create a separate work profile and connect with fellow employees from your company, regardless of their location. Users can join groups to collaborate on projects, track important updates from colleagues in the “Work Feed,” and create and join events.
On Monday, Facebook also debuted Multi-Company Groups, described as “shared spaces that allow employees from different organizations to work together, to extend collaboration beyond your company in a safe and secure way.” Workplace users can expect this feature to be rolled out within the next few weeks.
In November 2015, Facebook introduced a chat client — much like Messenger — to the platform. “Work Chat” allows users to connect privately with their co-workers by sending messages, participating in group chats, sharing links, photos and videos, and making voice calls. The chat client, which is also available as a mobile app, brings the platform closer to team-based messaging services such as Slack. Facebook is also reportedly working on introducing integration with other productivity platforms upon launch, notes TechCrunch.
Facebook began testing its “At Work” platform in early 2015, snapping up a number of global partners along the way, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, Norway’s DNB Bank, and India’s Yes Bank, among others. The company will be hoping that its wider rollout will finally put to bed the notion that Facebook is unsuitable for work, and merely serves as a distraction in the office space.
Updated on 10-10-2016 by Lulu Chang: Added news of Workplace’s official debut.
Discord is trying to push more visibility on the internet for some of its biggest communities, and there's a good chance your messages could end up in a Google Search. The platform is preparing to make conversations from certain public servers searchable on the web, so there's a privacy setting you might want to check before the rollout begins.
According to Discord's official announcement, the changes will roll out in two stages. Starting November 16, qualifying servers will have public web pages featuring automated summaries of conversations. By mid-December, individual messages from eligible public channels could also appear word-for-word in Google and other search engines.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?