On April 21 2010, it was announced that Microsoft has collaborated with Facebook to launch Docs.com, an online MS Office that is integrated with Facebook, meaning that you can sign in using your Facebook account and also share documents with your Facebook friends.
However, as it is currently in Beta, they do not grant immediate requests. To access Docs.com, you’ll need to request to join the waiting list through the main page first.
For those who are dying to try out Docs.com, but not yet granted access, fret not! Yours truly had tried out the service, and you can read my observations and screenshots below!
Available Office Applications:
Docs.com currently allows the uploading and creation of MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents.
Docs.com Add New Menu
Word:
Docs.com Word presents a familiar GUI that is similar to that of MS Word 2007, albeit a very small subset of the Desktop version’s features.
However, it does, IMHO, fulfil the basic authoring needs. In addition to text formatting, Docs.com also allows the user to insert tables and images.
Docs.com Word Editor
Excel and Powerpoint
Like the Word offering, both Excel and Powerpoint mimic their Desktop counterparts in appearance, but provide only the basic functionality. However, one thing to note is that bother Excel and Powerpoint requires ActiveX to be installed, implying that they can only be run from an Internet Explorer browser; I had not encountered such problems with Word though.
Docs.com Excel Editor
Docs.com Powerpoint Editor
Sharing
In the right pane of the editing mode, you can see options for sharing and also for posting to your Facebook wall (Hmm, can’t seem to get it to work).
Docs.com right pane
There are two types of sharing: “Viewers” or “Editors”. For both types, you can choose to share your document with individual friends (i.e. manually choose your friends to share with), or all your friends, or everyone, or for your eyes only.
Docs.com Sharing Options
Other features:
Docs.com allows the user to download the documents, but for some strange reason, the download is named as “Untitled.docx.doc” by default (but then, it’s still in Beta, so all is forgiven 
). In addition, Docs.com also provides the ability to view your documents using your desktop Office if it is installed. However, this feature will only work in Internet Explorer. Moreover, the documents will be run in “Read-only” only, so I’m not sure how useful this feature will be -_-”.
Verdict:
Overall, minor quirks notwithstanding, Docs.com does serve its purpose as a basic online authoring tool. However, the fact that Excel and Powerpoint requires Internet Explorer to function properly (ActiveX) may put off some users. Explaining this shortcoming as a way of getting around the browsers’ limitations will probably not hold water since Google Docs is able to achieve similar capabilities without ActiveX plugins.
Being an online offering (think cloud computing), I would naturally be inclined to think that Docs.com would be integrated with Windows Live platform – Hotmail, SkyDrive, Spaces. I had expected, at a minimum to be able to access my files from Skydrive. Unfortunately this integration is conspicuously missing. In this aspect, Microsoft still have some way to go before they are ready to wage a war with Google.
Final thoughts
I do think (sneers aside), that Microsoft Office, like it or not, is one of the best of its breed (Have anyone tried using OpenOffice? Horrible experience! :/ ). However it is conspicuously missing in action on the Internet. Docs.com is definitely a step in the right direction, but being late to the scene, will need lots of catching up to do, most notably in the integration with their other online offerings.
Stay tuned for my analysis of Microsoft’s online offerings and strategies, as well as a post comparing the various online office products such as Zoho, Zimbra and Google Docs. 
- Lem
Tags: cloud computing, Facebook, Microsoft, office, social, strategy
[...] more details on Docs.com, I have an overview and some screenshots in a previous entry. // – [...]
[...] nothing spectacular. Also, I wonder when they’ll integrate Docs.com with SkyDrive as well. Docs.com’s GUI is almost identical to that of Office Web Apps and I can’t imagine why they are not [...]
thank you for the post!
Thank you ever so for you post.Much thanks again. Fantastic.
I never in a million years would have considered at things like that. This is going to make my life so much easier.
Thanks for the info. You did a good job communicating your message. Keep up the good work.
Thanks. I found your site on Google trying to find this type of info. By the way, I am using an older version of internet explorer and your site wasn’t formatted right. It looked fine on Firefox.
Sorry to be off topic, but I like your posts and I wanted some feedback for my blog. I have a hard time writing, but I do want to share my experiences. Am I stuck between a rock and a hard place? Or should I just do it?
[...] the waiting list, and newcomers will have access to Docs.com immediately, instead of having to be put on waiting list. This is due to major improvements made to performance and [...]
[...] Docs.com, a free online MS Office offering that is tightly integrated with Facebook, has announced that you can now create and share your Docs.com document with your Facebook groups; your friends will be notified on their walls when you edit the shared documents. (But weird thing is, while the updates will be posted to your friends wall, it doesn’t seem to update the Facebook group’s wall. Hmmm…) [...]
[...] is a joint collaboration between Microsoft and Facebook to create an online MS Office suite that leverages on Facebook platform. Surprisingly, Docs.com is [...]