Microsoft and Facebook team up

SOCIAL NOTWORKING SITE Facebook and software octopus Microsoft have announced a deal to let Facebook users collaborate on creating documents online using the online version of Office 2010.

The Facebook for Docs application, announced by Mark Zuckerberg at the F8 developer's conference in San Francisco, is still in beta.

It means that users can view documents but will have to join a waiting list to access the full service.

Microsoft has announced that Docs.com is an online version of its Office suite which claims to makes it easy to share and collaborate with your friends online.

One of your friends can create a document and share it with you and it goes into your inbox.

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

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

The joint initiative is targeted at the Google Docs online services, with Microsoft looking to extend the use of its cloud services in the same area.

The Vole is a big investor in Facebook. It splashed out $240 million on the company in 2007. µ