Dive Brief:

• Facebook announced a new enterprise collaboration app for Workplace, its enterprise communication product the social media giant launched six weeks ago.
• The new app will integrate with apps for CRM, file sharing, email, calendars and more, according to Workplace by Facebook director Julien Codorniou, who made the announcement on stage Tuesday at TechCrunch Disrupt London.
• Codorniou said the new app will "offer a full platform of integrations with SaaS services in the enterprise collaboration space." That could include things like Box for file sharing, Salesforce for CRM, or Google for email and calendaring, for example, suggested TechCrunch.

Dive Insight:

In launching the new app, Facebook will now compete directly with Slack and Microsoft’s new Teams in the increasingly competitive workplace collaboration and productivity space. Like the other platforms, Facebook is trying to create a seamless work platform that doesn't force users to leave the platform every time they need to accomplish a different task. 

Slack has proven enormously popular. The workplace messaging startup has received a steady stream of investment and as of May touted 3 million daily active users, with 2 million connected simultaneously. In April, Slack said it had more than 800,000 paying customers, with corporate users such as NASA and Spotify.

But Facebook has familiarity on its side, and could potential help slow Slack’s growth. Slack may also continue to struggle with scale as it works to expand its user base. Facebook, on the other hand, has an army of engineers working to support its global pool of users.