July 2nd, 2007
Zoho joins Facebook
Zoho doesn’t miss an opportunity to connect up with the hot products and services. Last week the company announced a version of its main browser-based applications for the iPhone and today it joined the Facebook revolution.
From Facebook, you can launch, view and edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Similar to the iZoho for the iPhone, you can only edit Writer documents. Viewing and editing Zoho files happens on separate Zoho pages that lack any Facebook context, such as a back to Facebook link or button.
What’s interesting is how Zoho can tap into a person’s friends network for sharing documents and collaboration. Given the number of students using Facebook, this could be a useful features. Zoho’s Raju Vegesna said the 30 percent of Zoho users of students. Zoho’s main applications continue to be available at no charge.
While the Zoho Facebook application doesn’t represent a significant market of revenue gain at this point, over time the mashing up of social platforms and applications will become standard.
As the gravitational pull of services like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Zing, Bebo and others gets stronger, the other on demand applications vendors will follow Zoho’s lead.
In addition, Zoho announced that it will introduce in a few weeks a Zoho dashboard for organizing the files from any Zoho applications from a single page.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
