• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, February 28, 2019

Putting Slack and other corporate communication services on notice, Facebook says Workplace is gaining serious traction.  It's a secure space for companies to connect and collaborate.

Not unlike, the company's flagship service, Workplace includes features chat, video calling, posting and groups.

Since its launch in late 2016, Workplace has attracted more than 2 million paying customers, Facebook said Thursday.

In part, that’s thanks to adoption from some large companies. Now, over 150 companies with more than 10,000 employees are using Workplace, according to Julien Codorniou, vice president, Workplace Facebook.  

That includes companies like Walmart, Heineken, Virgin Atlantic, Farfetch and Spotify. It also large NGOs such as WWF, Unicef UK and Save the Children. More recent client additions include Nestlé, Vodafone, GSK, Telefonica, AstraZeneca and Delta Air Lines.

Of interest to business clients, Workplace also includes integrations with Microsoft, Google, ServiceNow, and other service providers.

With Workplace, Facebook has also aligned with PwC, Deloitte Digital, Revevol, Slalom Consulting, Enablo, among other partners, Codorniou notes in a new blog post.

“With them, we're building a Workplace Economy of system integrators, re-sellers and independent software vendors,” he said.

Still the market leader in business messaging tools, Slack recently reported about 10 million daily active users.

Yet, Facebook and other tech giants have Slack in their sites.

Microsoft, for example, recently said its Teams service is now being used by 329,000 organizations.

Trying to stay a step ahead of the competition, Slack recently released Block Kit Builder and Block Kit -- a UI tool and framework to help developers make sure their apps are running smoothly on its platform.

The idea behind Block Kit is to give developers more control over the hierarchy of their app messaging, while the Block Kit Builder is a prototyping tool for designing and coding apps.