Popular social networking site Facebook is reportedly preparing to launch an online service designed for professionals called Facebook at Work.
Details about the new site were revealed by an anonymous source who claims to have knowledge of the matter, Financial Times reported.
According to the insider, the new networking service will launch in a few months and will function similarly to the traditional Facebook account. But instead of showing personal posts and photos from users in the news feed, Facebook at Work will display work-related messages and documents.
The source noted that Facebook at Work was designed to foster collaboration within the working environment. Like other professional networking sites such as LinkedIn and Salesforce.com, the profiles of Facebook at Work users highlight their career backgrounds.
Currently, Facebook at Work is still at its testing phase. It has over 8,000 users including Facebook's own employees. Members of the site use it to send messages and work together on project documents, Business Insider has learned.
Aside from Facebook employees, the social networking site is also working with other companies for the test run of its newest service.
It is still not clear if Facebook at Work will be turned into a profit-generating venture. For the site's pilot version, users are not required to pay a subscription fee to create their accounts. But according to the insider, the site already features advertisements.
Despite Facebook's intention for its professional networking site, a few factors hinder Facebook at Work's potential success, according to Yahoo! Finance.
For one, some major companies are very strict when it comes to employees spending time on their social networking accounts. Other offices even block online access to sites such as Facebook and Twitter because they are deemed as distractions in the workplace.
In addition, although online ads could instantly generate funds for Facebook at Work, they could also prevent the company from successfully entering the business industry, as Wired pointed out.
Since Facebook is known for mining personal account information for targeted ads, company executives might feel uncomfortable with employees sharing confidential messages and documents through the networking site.
