Facebook at Work to be launched in 2016, will be a paid service

After testing the service for about a year, Facebook is expected to launch the professional version of its social network sometime soon in the coming months . The new service is dubbed as Facebook at Work.

Aimed at businesses and their employees, the professional version will be almost similar to its counterpart with some minor exceptions. However, users will be able to maintain a distinct profile totally separate from their existing ones.

“I would say 95 percent of what we developed for Facebook is also adopted for Facebook at Work,” Julien Codorniou, director of global platform partnerships at Facebook mentioned to Reuters.

Codorniou also mentioned that Facebook may develop exclusive features for Facebook at Work, including security tools. From January, Facebook started beta-testing it as a free and ‘invite only’ service. Like the regular service, the professional version will also be available for both iOS and Android users.

The company spokeswoman Vanessa Chan mentioned the service will be rolled out sometime in 2016, reports CNET. Facebook at Work would cost "a few dollars per month per user." The service will be open to all companies. Currently more than 300 companies, including Royal Bank of Scotland and Stella and Dot, are testing the service.

Club Mediterranee SA recently adopted Facebook at Work, reports CNBC. It is the first global travel company to start testing the new service. The company will bring the service live to its 13,000 employees by summer 2016.

Currently, Facebook is the world's largest social network used by more than a billion users. Facebook at Work would help employees team up, share and communicate with each other more frequently and seamlessly.

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