Docs.com brings Office document sharing to Facebook

Facebook and Microsoft have teamed up on a new online document-sharing service that will seamlessly integrate with the popular social networking site. Dubbed Docs.com, the beta site allows users to log in with their Facebook credentials, create Office documents -- Word, Excel and Powerpoint files -- and add friends as either viewers or document editors. New documents will show up in a user's news feed, just like status updates or pictures.


The service is based on Microsoft's upcoming Office 2010 Web Apps suite and tapping into Facebook's large user base might get it off to a good start in the inevitable competition with Google Docs. The question is if collaborating on documents is an activity Facebook users are interested in -- you know the site's not particularly known for boosting productivity at work, right?

Docs.com is currently in a limited beta phase, so anyone can view documents, but in order to edit or create new ones you'll have to join a wait list. Google has also been making a big push around online-document sharing, with a recent slew of updates to its free services and their paid Google Apps for Businesses offering becoming an increasingly popular alternative to desktop suites.