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Facebook Launches Desktop Chat Apps for Workplace

The new apps include the ability to screen share a single desktop app right through to your entire desktop.

October 6, 2017
Facebook Workplace

Alongside the standard Facebook offering on the web and mobile, the social network targets business users with Workplace. It's Facebook's enterprise collaboration service aimed at being a complete communication tool for businesses. It costs between $1-$3 per user per month, and forms a separate, secure mini social network for employees.

As TechCrunch reports, Facebook this week quietly launched Windows and Mac desktop chat apps for Workplace into beta. Those apps include a screen sharing feature as standard. Workplace already offers messaging and video chat, but they can now be done via a desktop app rather than a web browser. Screen sharing should also make collaboration and meetings easier.

Facebook confirmed the existence of these new apps, called Workplace Chat, to TechCrunch through spokesperson Vanessa Chan. Chan commented that, "This was one of the most widely requested features by customers, so we built it."

As you'd expect from a desktop chat app, it keeps a record of all your conversations, allows you to search through them, view any images or videos shared, and enable desktop notifications. The screen sharing feature is also quite advanced, allowing you to share the entire screen or just a specific app window.

Workplace already enjoys over 14,000 business customers, with the latest to sign up being Walmart. By offering Workplace, Facebook is in direct competition with other business-focused collaboration services such as the very popular Slack. Of course, Facebook has the added benefit of 2 billion non-business users generating revenue while it develops Workplace to appeal to more paying enterprise customers.

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About Matthew Humphries

Senior Editor

I started working at PCMag in November 2016, covering all areas of technology and video game news. Before that I spent nearly 15 years working at Geek.com as a writer and editor. I also spent the first six years after leaving university as a professional game designer working with Disney, Games Workshop, 20th Century Fox, and Vivendi.

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