If you haven't checked out Microsoft's beta project, Docs.com [1], the time has come to do so. Today, Microsoft greatly expanded the capabilities of this app that allows Facebook users to upload and share Microsoft Office Web documents. Docs.com was first announced in April, but today the team added some heavy-duty features to bring it from interesting to truly useful.
Specifically, Docs.com users can now:
- Post documents on behalf of the Like/Fan Page.
- Author a document as a Facebook Page (how much easier will it be to customize a Facebook Like page?)
- Add the Docs profile tab to your Facebook Page
- Share and co-manage all docs created by other page administrators
- And of course, you can still post a document to your Facebook page (Docs.com supports Word, Excel and PowerPoint)
Docs.com is a project from Microsoft FUSE Labs [2], a group within Microsoft developing social networking apps.
Microsoft PR sent me a note about the new features on Docs.com today, pointing out the most famous user of it to date: The Mystery Guitar Man [3], who has posted his Vuvuzela Symphony video and an accompanying PowerPoint to Facebook, through the Docs service. MysteryGuitarMan was fielding a lot of questions about how he did the special effects in his videos, so he used the Office documents to explain.
The big new feature announced today is really Fan/Like page support. I've only had a few minutes to play with it, but in a matter of clicks, it is possible to add a Docs.com tab to your profile or Fan/Like page and then you can share information with your Facebook peeps via Microsoft Office Web Apps. (I don't have my Docs page set up on my Facebook Like page, yet, but come find me on Facebook anyway [4] ... maybe I'll use it to publish chapters of my perpetually in-process novel).
It's not the only document sharing service on Facebook. Others include My Documents [5] and Scribd for Facebook. [6] But hey, I invested all that time in learning the Microsoft Ribbon menu, I don't want to use another Office app (except Google Apps, oh and I also use Zoho), if i don't have to.
I still have my issues with the features/functionality with Office Web Apps [7](particularly Excel), but few things are as painful as trying to customize a Facebook page. I'll take writing an Office Web document over that anytime.
Here's an image of a document that can shared via Facebook with the Docs.com service.
[8]
Check out these other posts from Microsoft Subnet
- All of today's Microsoft news and blogs [9]
- Microsoft was against software patents before it was for them [10]
- Has Microsoft Courier come back to life? [11]
- Microsoft was against software patents before it was for them [10]
- How to create custom AD LDS attributes [12]
- Microsoft's cloud is slower than Google's, Amazon's, benchmark says [13]
- Finalists Named for the Imagine Cup 2010 Competition! [14]
- Thoughts on Cloud Computing [15]
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