Tech

Facebook's communications tool for workplaces has 2 million paying users

Key Points
  • Workplace, Facebook's social network offering for enterprises, now has 2 million paid users, the company announced on Thursday.
  • The announcement comes two months after the company appointed a new executive, Karandeep Anand, to lead the development of the enterprise product. 
Mark Zuckerberg delivers a keynote at Facebook's Oculus Connect 5 event in San Jose, California, on September 26, 2018. 
Screenshot

Facebook on Thursday announced that Workplace, the company's communications tool for companies, now has more than 2 million paid users.

Facebook launched Workplace in late 2016, and since then, the company has not shared much about the progress of the enterprise service.

The progress appears to be reflected in Facebook's latest financial filing, which shows the company generated $825 million in revenue from "payments and other fees" in 2018, up 16 percent from 2017. By way of comparison, the company booked more than $55 billion from ad sales last year.

The announcement comes about two months since Facebook appointed executive Karandeep Anand as the new leader of Workplace's product development. It also comes months after the company told clients it would move Workplace to a website domain separate from that of the company's consumer product.

Despite this progress, Workplace remains in a crowded market that includes the likes of Microsoft and Slack, which is preparing to go public this year. Microsoft claims its Teams product is used by 329,000 organizations while Slack in January said it is now used by more than 85,000 paying organizations. And just this week, a former rising star from Facebook launched a start-up called Threads that competes directly with Workplace.

Facebook on Thursday did not say how many organizations pay for Workplace, but the company in late 2017 said Workplace was used by 30,000 organizations. A marketing email sent by Workplace on Thursday repeated that figure.

"We've already helped millions of people at over 30,000 companies work better together," the Workplace marketing email said. "We'd love to do the same for you."

Disclosure: Comcast Ventures, the venture arm of Comcast, is an investor in Slack. Comcast owns CNBC parent company NBCUniversal.

WATCH: Here's how to see which apps have access to your Facebook data — and cut them off

Here's how to see which apps have access to your Facebook data — and cut them off
VIDEO0:0000:00
Here's how to see which apps have access to your Facebook data — and cut them off