Facebook and Microsoft team up for online Docs

Facebook and Microsoft have announced a deal which will let the social networking site's users collaborate on creating documents using Docs.com, the online version of Office 2010.

Facebook for Docs, announced by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg at the F8 developer conference in San Francisco, is still in beta and users can currently view documents.

A waiting list is in operation to access the full service, which was developed by Microsoft's FUSE labs.

"Microsoft is announcing Docs.com today. It's an online version of its Office suite that makes it easy to share and collaborate with your friends online," said Zuckerberg.

"One of your friends can create a document and share it with you, and it's really easy and goes to your inbox. It's all the power of the Microsoft Office suite online with a simple Facebook integration."

Users can sign into Docs using their Facebook ID, and new documents will show up on the Facebook news feed along with editor details.

"For now we exchange Word, PowerPoint and Excel docs and you can offer those in your rich client if you have Office [or] use the web apps to offer those online if you don't have Office," said Lili Cheng, general manager of Microsoft's FUSE labs.

The move will be a blow to Google as the company looks to extend the use of its cloud services in the same area, but it will hardly have come as a surprise. Microsoft is a shareholder in Facebook after investing US$240m in 2007.