• by Colin Kirkland , May 15, 2024

After a decade, Meta is shutting down Workplace, an enterprise communications app that aimed to help connect employees working in different organizations.

Workplace, formerly known as Facebook at Work, launched in its current form in 2016 and reported 7 million paid subscribers in 2021, marking a 40% increase over the previous year. The rise was likely due to the widespread switch to at-home work as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, once the pandemic subsided, the product was not able to compete with competitors like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

“We are discontinuing Workplace from Meta so we can focus on building AI and metaverse technologies that we believe will fundamentally reshape the way we work,” a Meta spokesperson said on Tuesday. “Over the next two years, we will provide our Workplace customers the option to transition to Zoom's Workvivo product, Meta's only preferred migration partner.”

Workplace will be available in its existing form until August 2025. After that, the app will be read-only until June 2026 and then will be shut down entirely.

Billing and payment will remain the same for Workplace customers until August 2024. The basic monthly plan costs $4 per user but can be upgraded with add-on capabilities from $2 per user each month. An organization's monthly bill depends on the number of billable users.

Over the past year and a half, Meta has focused on cutting outdated programs and employees in order to fulfill what CEO Mark Zuckerberg has referred to as the company's “Year of Efficiency.” The vision centers around advancing artificial intelligence technologies and building them into every Meta product alongside continuous efforts to invest in building out the metaverse and further developing virtual-reality hardware.

It's not clear how many employees will be impacted by the closure of Meta's Workplace app.