Facebook at Work signs up the Royal Bank Of Scotland

The bank will have all 100,000 of its employees on the service by the end of next year

Facebook at Work, the workplace collaboration service that the company launched to compete with the likes of Yammer and Slack, looks like it might be about to hit it big.

It just signed its biggest client yet, the Royal Bank Of Scotland, it was announced on Monday, which will allow its employees more easily collaborate and communicate for work projects. This news comes after the bank began piloting Facebook at Work over the summer.

Facebook At Work will be rolled out to 30,000 of the bank's employees by March of next year. By the end of next year its other 70,000 employees will be signed on. Those 100,000 users not only make the Royal Bank of Scotland the service's largest client yet, but also its first bank.

That will go a long way toward helping Facebook at Work go up against some pretty heavy competition,

The service, which started as is meant to have a similar look and feel to Facebook's pre-existing product, with features that we've all come to know and love, such as groups, NewsFeed, events and messaging. The big difference with Facebook at Work is that it does not have advertising, nor does it track user data.

Rather than be a competitor to LinkedIn, and allow users to connect with any professional contact, Facebook at Work is currently only focused on intra-company sharing, and creating collaboration between co-workers, at least for the time being. That makes it more of a competitor for services like Google and Yammer.

Its most interesting competition comes in the form of Slack, the company that has been one of the fastes rising stars in the tech world recently. Out of seemingly nowhere, the workplace collaboration tool raised its $120 million round last October, suddenly becoming a unicorn. Then it raised another $160 million valuing it at nearly $3 billion.

As of this summer more than a million people were using Slack every single day.

Of course, it's hard to ever see Facebook as an underdog, not with 1.49 billion average monthly active users as of its latest quarterly earnings report. That gives it a built-in advantage over any other company is tries to go after.

First reported in November of last year, Facebook at Work officially launched in January in pilot mode to a handful of companies. Now the service has over 300 enterprise clients who have signed up. Along with The Royal Bank of Scotland, companies that also use it include Heineken, Stella and Dot, and Century 21.

(Image source: en.wikipedia.org)