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Facebook's (FB) Workplace to Allow "Custom Integrations"

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Yesterday, Facebook Inc announced that it will be allowing more “third party custom integrations” into its enterprise business communicator, Workplace. It wants to make Workplace more functional, like supporting file transfer and sending emails.

Reportedly, “custom integrations” will enable businesses to customize Workplace as per their needs. The company has added application programming interfaces that will help in customizing Workplace.

Besides collaborating with Google and Microsoft, earlier, to integrate their products with Workplace, Facebook also had partnered with a group of technology and professional service organizations to accelerate the adoption of Workplace.

In Oct 2016, Facebook launched Workplace, initially called Facebook At Work. The project was piloted in 2015 and boasts in features that are common to Facebook’s main platform like News Feed, Trending, Live, Reactions and Search. It also has certain in-app exclusive features like dashboard analytics and a single sign-in access. Additionally it announced “Multi-Company Groups”, which will allow employees of various organizations to work together.

With Workplace, the social media giant is trying to break into the lucrative but crowded enterprise software market which boast names like Slack, Convo, Microsoft’s (MSFT - Free Report)  Yammer and Salesforce’s (CRM - Free Report) Chatter. As per a Jun 2016 Gartner report, global spending for enterprise software will grow 7% year over year to $367.5 billion this year. It is a rewarding opportunity for Facebook, given the higher margins involved.

However, analysts observe that Workplace’s familiarity with the social media platform could benefit it greatly and at the same could also pose a challenge to it. As the look and feel of the app is almost similar to that of Facebook’s, it will be an easy access. Additionally, there are no advertisements on the platform and the privacy of the users will not be violated, as the company decided not to track users or hold their data.

Though most people may have a personal Facebook account, but having it as an office communicator will be a very different thing. As Tech Crunch had earlier put it, “Facebook will just have to conquer the stigma that it’s for fooling around, not for getting work done.”

At present, Workplace is used by 1K firms across the globe and the users include Royal Bank of Scotland, Starbucks (SBUX - Free Report) , Booking.com and Danone, along with some other regional leaders such as YES Bank (India) and the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (Singapore).

At present, Facebook carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Year to date, shares of Facebook have registered growth of 12.70% as against Zacks Internet Services Industry's negative growth of 0.18%.

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