Skip to main content

Singapore government is world’s first civil service on Facebook Workplace

facebook workplace singapore
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Facebook’s office chat platform Workplace just received a huge boost, thanks to its adoption by the Singapore government.

The country’s civil service began implementing Workplace last month and has thus far seen 15 agencies — comprising more than 5,300 public officers — sign up to the platform. By March 2017 Singapore’s entire public service of approximately 143,000 staffers will be using Workplace, reports GovInsider.

According to Peter Ong, head of the civil service, it was Workplace’s familiarity and its smartphone messaging app, dubbed “Work Chat,” that sealed the deal for the Public Service Division. He added that 82 percent of officers who have activated their accounts are now weekly active users.

Launched in October, Facebook Workplace is modeled on the design of the company’s flagship social network, complete with a News Feed-style timeline for the office called “Work Feed,” alongside Groups, and Messenger features. An exclusively premium service, Workplace costs $1 per user per month for groups larger than 10,000 people.

The online office chat space is becoming a competitive market. Despite boasting somewhat of a monopoly in the sector, Slack is now facing challenges from both Workplace and Microsoft’s recently launched Teams platform. For now, Slack remains miles ahead of the competition with more than 4 million daily active users, and 1.25 million paying users.

During its third quarter earnings call, Facebook claimed 1,000 organizations were using Workplace, including major corporations and brands such as Starbucks, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Danone. Unlike Slack, which offers a free version of its service, Workplace has the added advantage of its subscription-only model — meaning it could quickly turn the platform into a real money-spinner.

The Singapore government’s decision to utilize the service is another high-profile win for the company, and could even result in more administrations following suit.

Editors' Recommendations

Saqib Shah
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Saqib Shah is a Twitter addict and film fan with an obsessive interest in pop culture trends. In his spare time he can be…
X seems to have deleted years of old Twitter images
The new X sign replacing the Twitter logo on the company's headquarters in San Francisco.

The social media platform formerly known as Twitter and recently rebranded as X appears to be having trouble showing images posted on the site between 2011 and 2014.

The issue came to widespread attention on Saturday when X user Tom Coates noted how the famous selfie posted by Ellen DeGeneres at the Oscars in 2014, which quickly broke the “most retweets” record, was no longer displaying. Later reports suggested the image had been restored, though, at the time of writing, we’re not seeing it.

Read more
X says it’s squashing the bug that deleted Twitter images and links
The new X sign replacing the Twitter logo on the company's headquarters in San Francisco.

X, formerly known as Twitter, says it’s working to restore potentially millions of images and links that suddenly and rather mysteriously disappeared from the platform in recent days.

“Over the weekend we had a bug that prevented us from displaying images from before 2014,” the company said in a post on its Support account on Monday. “No images or data were lost. We fixed the bug, and the issue will be fully resolved in the coming days.”

Read more
Snapchat hopes its new AI selfie feature will be a moneymaker
A screenshot of Snapchat's new AI-powered Dreams feature.

Snapchat Dreams

Snapchat was quick to jump aboard the AI bandwagon when it launched its “My AI” chatbot in February. And now the platform has released another feature that, like My AI, also harnesses generative AI.

Read more