Microsoft bolsters Facebook Docs sharing service

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 15 Oct 2010 at 07:49

Microsoft has released a bevy of new features for its Facebook-based document-sharing service, Docs.com.

Docs.com is an off-shoot of Microsoft's Office Web Apps, allowing users of the social network to share and collaborate on documents with their Facebook friends. It runs alongside Microsoft's own SkyDrive, which can be used to share documents with the wider world.

Microsoft has introduced a series of new features for Docs.com, the most significant of which is the ability to upload and share PDFs. Unlike Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, users won't be able to edit PDFs in the browser, but they do offer features such as full text search and the ability to download shared PDFs to the desktop.

Microsoft has also improved the search facilities on Docs.com, making it easier to find documents that have been shared publicly. The search engine now looks for keywords in the body text of documents, as well as the document's tags.

Search results are ranked by how popular a document is, and your relationship with the document's author (i.e. whether you're friends or not) - not only on the search keywords themselves.

Other new features include a Silverlight-based bulk document uploader, allowing you to drag and drop several files into the browser at once.

Docs.com has also introduced user-generated templates, which allow you to copy the style of other people's documents, if they give you permission to do so.