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
