Docs.com

Docs.com is a collaboration between Microsoft FUSE Labs and Facebook to provide a basic online document editing suite, similar to Google Docs. It is designed to make it easy to discover, create and share Office documents with your Facebook friends. It was announced and officially launched during Facebook f8 conference on April 21, 2010 by Mark Zuckerberg.^[1].

Overview

Docs.com currently offers the capability to upload or create new Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents. Users may edit documents online even if they do not have Office installed. However, the docs.com web editors integrate with Office so that users may edit documents on their PC or Mac and save them directly back to the cloud.

Docs.com is targeting individual users (e.g. students). A similar offering from Microsoft Office Live is directed at business customers.

Technical details

Docs.com leverages Facebook Connect for user authentication. Furthermore, the service is modeled after the Facebook Photos application and uses similar sharing settings so that users may easily invite their friends to either view or edit their documents.

Docs.com integrates into the Facebook UI much like photos by providing a homepage within Facebook ^[2], a profile tab, and by posting documents to a user's Facebook Wall.

The service is built using Microsoft's Office Web Apps and is compatible with the major browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome.

Support for Facebook pages

Docs.com announced support for Facebook pages on July, 8 2010.

Facebook page administrators have a shared folder where they may upload, create and edit shared documents. Documents can easily be posted to a Facebook page for the page's fans to view. Learn how the functionality works or how it was built.

Beta availability

Docs.com is currently in beta and is open to any Facebook user.

Docs.com graduated from closed to open beta on July 1, 2010.

Notes

1. ^ "Microsoft, Facebook launch Docs.com - CNET news April 21, 2010"
2. ^ "homepage within Facebook"

External links

• Docs.com
• Docs application on Facebook
• Docs.com announced by Mark Zuckerberg, Lili Cheng and Pat Kinsel
• Introducing Docs for Facebook Channel 9 (discussion forum) Video with Lili Cheng and Pat Kinsel
• Microsoft's Facebook Experiment
• Docs.com support for Facebook pages: View How or Learn More
• First Look at Docs.com by ZDnet
• "Early screen shots of Docs.com on WebScanNotes"