Facebook at Work opens up to more friends

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Facebook is finally ready to let more people onto its Facebook at Work social network designed specifically for enterprises and businesses.

First reported by Re/code, the closed beta trial of the service that has been open since January is ready to give way to a freemium version of the office-based social network before the year is out, according to Julien Codroniou, head of Facebook at Work.

At its heart, the service lets companies create their own social networks using Facebook's familiar technology and its popularity is likely to depend on users knowing what they see and more importantly liking it.

More than 100 companies have been using the product as part of the closed beta and it's a number that is continuing to expand.

Plenty of competition

Encouragingly for Facebook, early adopters have already started to expand its use internally. Taking Heineken as an example, testing was restricted to 40 of its top executives in the first instance but by the end of September it will be used by all 550 of its US-based employees.

There's no lack of competition in the social enterprise collaboration space with the likes of Microsoft's Yammer (and Delve), Podio, Huddle, Salesforce's Chatter and a number of others jostling for position.

• Facebook wants businesses to embrace social with Facebook at Work

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