Facebook once had big ambitions to become a major player in enterprise communications and productivity, but today the social network's parent company Meta is closing a very important chapter in its story. . TechCrunch has learned that Meta is shutting down Workplace, a version of Facebook built to enable communication between business teams and broader organizations.
We have reached out to the company for comment and sources say the company plans to make a formal announcement later today. Sources say the platform will operate as usual until September 2025, after which it will be read-only until May 2026, after which the service will be completely discontinued.
According to an internal memo, Facebook is recommending Zoom's Workvivo as an alternative for the transition. Another of his enterprise communications platforms, his Workvivo, was acquired by Zoom in 2023. Full meta notes below.
It's not yet clear how many employees will be affected by the closure.
The changes end a 10-year run for the product, which had big plans to bring a differentiated revenue stream to Facebook, but ultimately compete with the likes of Slack and later Microsoft's Teams. It proved too difficult to compete.
This probably shouldn't be too surprising since this division has been strategically up in the air for some time. I've also heard that Meta has been approached by an outside investment firm to spin out its division as an independent company and receive outside investment due to the impact of the coronavirus.
One source said Meta declined primarily because Facebook (and now Meta) views Workplace as a “strategic asset.” That's not because Workplace generates the nearly billions of dollars Meta makes from ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, but because it's important to presenting more diverse faces to the market. And it helped Meta make more diverse claims to other stakeholders. For regulators, Meta is more than just an overpowered social network. And for organizations, Facebook can do more than sell ads.
“It helps make Facebook [and Meta] He looks like an adult,” the source said.
Clearly, the company's priorities are changing now that it's focused on AI, so there could be a realignment beyond this over time.
Workplace background:
It was originally built on the way Facebook itself used its flagship social network. The company was already running a more closed version of Facebook for its own internal teams, but the company saw an opportunity to build it as a product aimed at business users.
Its working title is “Facebook @ Work” and it was built by a team in London. That team will be led by Lars Rasmussen, a former Google Maps co-inventor who was poached by Facebook to serve as the company's head of engineering. (He had long wanted to build his enterprise service at Facebook, and this was his baby.)
Ultimately, the product was released from beta as Workplace, which led to the creation of numerous third-party integrations as Facebook saw an opportunity to create productivity hooks for users based on the fundamental purpose of communication. I proceeded.
Over time, Workplace was able to acquire some very important customers, but ultimately faced an unexpected twist. Slack became a viral hit and gained a lot of attention, which spurred Microsoft to create Teams. Workplace initially tried to fight these on its own, but eventually relented and partnered with Teams on certain features.
Over time, many of the key employees who built Workplace left, and one source says the product never really recovered after COVID-19.
“Growth has slowed” since the pandemic, the people said, and the company has been undergoing an identity crisis of late — after all, it's not even called Facebook anymore, and it's not clear if meta means much. do not have–. It also shows that it is more definitive by stopping all non-core projects. ”
The notes are as follows.
Workplace manager
Today we are announcing that we have made the difficult decision to close Workplace from Meta in 2026.
We understand that this decision is disruptive for businesses, organizations, and partners who rely on Workplace every day. Our priority is to make the transition as smooth as possible.
Timeline
With your current plan, you can use Workplace as usual until August 31, 2025. Our account management and customer support teams will continue to assist you with any questions or concerns during this period. Additionally, Meta will give you his 50% discount on Workplace starting September 1, 2024.
From September 1, 2025 to May 31, 2026, Workplace will be free and only accessible to read and download existing data. Your access will then be terminated and your Workplace instance will be deleted.
Download your information
To download the data, the user must[情報のダウンロード]Enable the tool to allow users to download data directly from Workplace settings. If you want to export information from Workplace, you can use the Workplace API.
While we appreciate that you already have an existing technology partner, Workvivo by Zoom is Meta's only recommended migration partner, and we work with Zoom to help customers better transition from Workplace to Zoom's Workvivo product. We will provide additional tools and services to help you make the transition.
