A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

Engineers and FaaP (Facebook As A Platform)?

Engineers and FaaP (Facebook As A Platform)?
Oleg
Oleg
20 October, 2011 | 2 min for reading

There are many discussions these days going around cloud and confrontation between large technological companies. If you miss the following article – The Great Tech Wars of 2012. Apple, Facbook, Google, and Amazon battle for the future of innovation economy, please have a read. Time worth spending, in my view.

I can see more evidence Facebook’s attempt to become a platform beyond social network. It comes from the news about Facebook building their own data centers as well as many others. I was reading Design News article – Autodesk preps Facebook Tech publishing plug-in yesterday. I made me think about some interesting angle how Facebook can be used to communicate between individual designers, manufacturing companies and consumers. I specially liked the following passage:

Inventor Publisher users can certainly post their documentation and animations to any of these sites today, but there are extra steps involved, and they can’t do it directly from the software. With this preview, Autodesk is adding a publishing wizard via a new icon on the software’s toolbar. Simply click, and the tool will specify the proper steps to get a video or exploded CAD animation posted on line. The tool also has some Custom Presets that allow users to publish their creations and be sure they’re in keeping with corporate standards.

The following picture was published on Design news. In a nutshell, you put the content on the Facebook in an easy way. I’d love to try this plug-in when it will be available.

The direct communication between tools and Facebook is specially important, in my view. These days, usability is a key. Your potential customer can drop using your product just because few extra clicks (or steps) he needs to make every day.

What is my conclusion? The idea of communicating via Facebook is an interesting one. If your potential “consumer” is using Facebook as a primary communication and social tool, the effect can be fascinating. I need to think more about use cases and practical scenarios. At the same time, content is collected by Facebook. Companies like GrabCAD is collecting engineering content these days on their sites. Sounds like a competition… Just my thoughts.

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
13 July, 2010

The complexity is probably the biggest problem that exists in PLM today. How can we resolve it? Siemens HD PLM...

31 December, 2009

The idea of 3D publishing isn’t new. For the last few years we had chance to see multiple examples of...

29 February, 2020

There are very few topics in PLM vocabulary that can raise fewer debates that these three letters – FFF, which...

15 December, 2013

PDM is not a new domain in enterprise, engineering and manufacturing software. It might sounds like PDM functions are clearly...

22 May, 2013

Collaboration. Magic and one of the most confusing words. People are using it in so many contexts that it became...

28 January, 2025

From time to time, I’m coming to discuss the intersections of engineering software and PLM. Here are some of my...

28 June, 2011

Do you know what is the most widely adopted PLM system in the world? You probably can guess based on...

8 May, 2015

Traditional manufacturing companies are associated with large manufacturing facilities, manufacturing equipment and significant initial investment to take business off the...

17 September, 2010

I’ve been presenting on Technia PLM Innovation Forum in Stockholm early this week. My presentation shows how to get into...

Blogroll

To the top