Facebook + MS Office Web = Docs.com

Today, Microsoft and Facebook opened the new service (+ Facebook app) Docs.com, which allows to store and display office documents on your Facebook profile and share them (for viewing and collaborative editing) with your friends, groups or all Facebook users. Documents can be viewed in the browser with the new viewer and edited with Office Web Applications. The online editors are still available only to beta testers, and their reviews are not very positive. But the point of the service is not in the editors but in Facebook integration. Will it be useful for business? At first glance, business-users will not use Facebook to collaborate on documents. But as a marketing channel to promote MS Office Web - it can work. Especially in light of the new Facebook plan, aimed to grab the Internet:

This plan is based on the new API called Open Graph. This interface allows third-party applications and sites use public data from user Facebook profile: social connections, interests and messages. Thus, third-party services will be able to provide the user with a personalized interface based on his preferences (if he logged into Facebook). This means that a huge number of sites and services will support the Facebook authentication. R.I.P OpenID.


In addition, Facebook wants to create the global recommendation system (from movies to vehicles) with the help of "Like" buttons, which other sites can embed on any page. Clicking this button, Facebook user creates a connection between himself and any object (e.g. his favorite restaurant on Yelp), and this connection (recommendation) becomes available on its Facebook-profile. Then, if someone search for restaurants on Facebook, he'll first see restaurants recommended by his friends. In addition, the site can install a plug-in displaying which Facebook users have recommends the given object.

So Facebook wants to become the center of the Internet, connecting all the other sites. Still this role was played by Google.