Facebook's Slack competitor is getting a standalone messaging app

Facebook may be the last company you'd ever expect to make software for serious businesses, but the social network is quickly proving the haters wrong.

A year after officially launching Workplace, the business-focused version of Facebook, the service now counts more than 30,000 businesses and organizations using the software, Facebook announced Thursday. 

That group, more than double what Workplace claimed six months ago, includes names like Starbucks, Spotify, Lyft, and Walmart.

Though not as huge as some of its biggest competitors — less than a year in Microsoft Teams counts more than 125,000 organizations — the growth is impressive, considering that it wasn't that long ago that the idea of Facebook launching professional software seemed like more of a joke than anything else. Read more...