Meta Workplace Social Network Integrates With Microsoft Teams

Meta, formerly Facebook, and Microsoft on Wednesday (Nov. 10) rolled out plans for the integration of Meta’s Workplace enterprise social network software suite and Microsoft Teams, which will give customers access to Workplace content in the Teams app, according to a CNBC report.

The deal represents a collaboration between two enterprise communication software rivals, although Workplace targets companywide connections and Teams is about instantaneous connections between workers and their direct colleagues.

Vodafone and Accenture have been among the high-profile customers pushing for Meta and Microsoft to bring together the power of their platforms, Meta’s Head of Workplace Ujjwal Singh told CNBC. “…Customers use the complementary features, not the competing features. There are customers that are just Workplace shops, and then there are customers that are just Teams shops. This is really for those customers that use both.”

Workplace hit seven million paid subscribers in May, while the Teams product had 250 million monthly active users as of July. Salesforce-owned Slack had 12 million daily active users in September 2019, the last time it reported such figures. Its paying customers increased almost 40% year over year in June 2021 to 169,000.

Microsoft also offers Yammer, an enterprise social network software package that is a more direct competitor with Meta’s Workplace. Yammer’s usage had doubled year over year, with “tens of millions of monthly active users” as of August 2021.

Workplace has integrations with Microsoft’s Office 365, SharePoint, Azure Active Directory, OneDrive and Teams, but not with Yammer, Singh told CNBC.

“I would say we’re best-in-class around community, connection, people first and serving all employees,” he said. “Teams is arguably best-in-class around productivity, so this is really two best-in-class products coming together to solve an employee-experience problem.”

Related news: Facebook Name Change to Reflect Metaverse Move

The former Facebook has been increasingly interested in diving more deeply into the metaverse, starting with the beta release of its social virtual reality (VR) platform Horizon Worlds, which works in conjunction with Oculus Quest.

The metaverse is defined as a digital world that gives people the ability to explore virtual places together without being in the same place. Meta has more than 10,000 employees focused on AR glasses and VR hardware, and is looking to go from a social media behemoth to a company focused on the metaverse.