Zoho Enables Facebook Connect

Zoho‘s tagline is “Work. Online”. Facebook’s could as well be “Bunk work. Online”. The two could not be further apart, yet by enabling Facebook Connect, Zoho hopes to woo more users and make it easier for existing ones to share their work and link both accounts. And you would like to update your Facebook friends with inputs on the projects that you’re working on, wouldn’t you?

Zoho, with significant operations in Chennai, offers a business productivity suite that has over 20 applications in all including Office, Email hosting, Wiki, Reports, CRM software, project management and document management applications for the desktop. Internet users can now login to or register with Zoho with their Facebook IDs. It already had a Facebook app Zoho Online Office, which has 1,105 monthly active users.

Will It Help, Privacy?

Facebook claims “Connected users create 15-60% more content than users who have not connected with Facebook Connect.” Offering the ability to share a presentation or database with friends or colleagues might spark an increase in activity on Zoho, but how will it ensure privacy of the shared documents is maintained? Though Facebook has increase the level of controls of what we share on the social networking site to which audience, the most recent being an extension, released last week. Previously, Facebook users were given control of sharing of their status updates, links, photos and videos, and as of February 18, the site extended this t0 include any piece of content shared through applications. Yet, one wonders if this will be viewed as a good thing amongst business users, small or big. It is however the perfect tool for students to share essays, projects and assignments.