Microsoft Office; a user friendly professional environment for the creation, modification and publication of documents, presentations, databases and transcripts.
Facebook; a social network of online user profiles connecting photos, videos, posts, interests, events and jobs.
Say theoretically Facebook ate Microsoft Office…
Well already Facebook is beginning to implement document hosting along with the ability to embed files.
However if live streaming technology such as the content hosted on the sites ( justin.tv, ustream and twitch.tv) just to name a few, was manipulated to allow real time interaction between multiple users. To what benefit? well imagine an online meeting staged between a developer and their client. In most cases the developer uploads the content to a server, where the client then downloads or previews the content and then has to try and communicate their response either via the phone, private messaging, webcam etc etc… If both users could connect to a centralized server where they were both granted access to interact with the document while hosting an integrated web conference allowing access to audio visual communication, then the client could clearly explain their forever changing specification allowing for a dynamic work process to be developed and cutting all the time wasted barking up the wrong tree. The system would create a more efficient working environment and relationship between both parties.
Post meeting, you can return to your companies virtual HQ with the document you and your team spent all night polishing, covered with annotations and symbols from the client. You can quickly host it on a virtual white board for your team to digest and even add sticky notes interpreting the clients new criteria.
Obviously a hierarchical system for users within a team would have to be implemented to allow for the digital counterpart of the big boss sat in their oversized office starring admirably into the mirror.
This dynamic office environment allows for the ever growing indie developers out there to access a domain where all the files they need to transfer between themselves and the office are hosted.
Multi national users can now interact in the office environment; attend web conferences, download team documents, collaborate on documents with other team members, promote themselves professionally, access their social network (family & friends), promote jobs, recruit candidates, advertise products, publish their portfolio and much much more, and all this from one location.
All this being said… We all know that with Microsoft next release of Windows, they will have in fact eaten Facebook and implemented your public documents onto a sharing network, have live chat built in along with all the other function integrated on the OS, conveniently placed under their watchful eye… deeming this whole article pointless and social networks obsolete.
Linux anyone?
John Collinge 