Microsoft, Facebook Launch Docs for Facebook Beta

by Nicholas Kolakowski

Facebook and Microsoft launched the beta version of Docs for Facebook in conjunction with the start of Facebook’s f8 conference in San Francisco.

Docs offers users many of the typical Office tools to put together their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

Docs users can share their work with Facebook friends, selecting which of those friends can see and/or edit a particular document.

Docs users can view their PowerPoint documents in slideshow format.

Docs presents a stripped-down user interface, reminiscent in many ways of other cloud-based productivity suites such as Google Apps and Microsoft’s own Office 2010 Web Apps.

Users can either create a new Word, Excel or PowerPoint document within Docs, or else upload a document from their PC.

The rightmost portion of the screen offers Facebook-style updates about the document. Those users who want a more robust experience can open this online Word document, for example, in actual Word.

The Docs dashboard allows users to view their Facebook friends’ documents.

Docs can also be used as a cloud repository for the user’s own documents.

It took four months for FUSE Labs to develop the beta, from concept to implementation.