Editor’s note: this post originated here on April 21, 2010.
I’m so excited to announce the launch of a new beta Facebook app from FUSE Labs called “Docs”, also available at our docs.com website. Built on Microsoft Office 2010, the Docs app enables Facebook® users for the first time to create and share Microsoft Office documents directly with their Facebook friends, using the Office tools they already know.
It’s been quite a sprint for the FUSE team to deliver this beta – from concept to its initial implementation in less than four months. The FUSE Labs mission is to explore a range of “Future Social Experiences”. In this exploration it’s our belief that we may increase the value of Office ‘docs’ by giving everyone the ability to seamlessly take their friends and connections with them from Facebook to docs.com.
The fact that we’ve been able to adapt the Office 2010 “Web Apps” technology to work directly with Facebook truly speaks to the flexibility and power not just of the Facebook platform, but also of the Office system’s rich “contextual collaboration” capabilities. And we’d never have been able to achieve our critical ‘simplicity’ goals had it not been for our ability to use a new test feature from Facebook that allows us to build an instantly personalized and seamless document authorization & sharing experience directly from our site.
This exploration exposes yet another facet of Ray Ozzie’s broad and long-held vision of social productivity. Although quite simple (and fun!), docs.com integrated with the Facebook experience bring together the best of ‘software’ with the best of ‘services’. Documents can be created directly within the app, or can be uploaded from your PC. After starting work on a document alone, you might then choose a few others with whom to share it. Or you might instead share it with all your friends, or you might share it with the world. Documents can be viewed and edited directly within a web browser – or, with a single click, you can edit them more richly and powerfully through the Microsoft Office software on your PC or Mac.
One of our FUSE Labs principles is that ‘it’s not what you say – rather, it’s what you do, what you learn, and how you adapt’. So, we hope you’ll register at docs.com, have some fun with our app, and help us explore! See you there!
*Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.
