Facebook Workplace, the company’s enterprise communication tool, now has over 5 million paying users, compared to 3 million paid users in October 2019, the company announced. Facebook will also roll out new features for the service including a video conferencing option called Workplace Rooms in June, and the company will provide the service for free to all Workplace users till the end of this year. Workplace Rooms will be based on the same technology that the company uses for its Messenger Rooms video conference service, which was launched globally only a few weeks ago. Video conference platforms have seen a huge surge in demand owing to COVID-19 lockdowns around the world, as Google Meet crossed 50 million downloads on the Play Store, and Zoom registered 300 million daily meeting participants. Apart from video conferencing, Facebook will also roll out the ability to use Portal (its smart displays) devices to make and attend Workplace Rooms video calls. Other features that the company will add is automatic live captioning in six languages for Workplace Live video, and taking live questions from the audience during live discussions. Facebook, yesterday, said that some of its workforce will be able to request to work remotely permanently, as the company joined companies such as Twitter, who have already allowed some employees to permanently work from home.
