Full FeedZoho gets social, comes to Facebook and iGoogle
What’s the biggest threat to cloud computing at the moment? Most of us might answer with something like cost, lack of stability or sluggishness. Zoho doesn’t think this way, though. It seems that for Zoho’s services the biggest issue is user laziness or forgetfulness.
Zoho has announced its new Zoho Gadgets. Zoho Gadgets are embedded into different websites, with support for iGoogle, Facebook, Orkut, or any other website with OpenSocial. The gadgets can also be pasted into other websites with the HTML code. These gadgets act like most other gadgets in iGoogle. They show a list of your Zoho Inbox, Docs documents, Calendar, etc. When you click on any of the items in the Zoho Gadget, it opens a new window or tab with that item in it.
According to Zoho, the Zoho Gadgets are there because people tend to pend a lot of their time online at services such as iGoogle and Facebook, which makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is why the Gadgets would then take them away from that experience. There must be some way to allow for an editable document inside an OpenSocial gadget.
Otherwise, it would just be easier to convince people to add a bookmark to Zoho on their bookmark bar. It would work just the same. The only thing it wouldn’t do is show the the items in different web services.
Read [Business Wire]
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Thanks for the feedback Shawn.
“What doesn’t make sense is why the Gadgets would then take them away from that experience. There must be some way to allow for an editable document inside an OpenSocial gadget”
Yes, I agree that it will be awesome to stay within a gadget-y interface and switch into detailed views as and when needed - like in the case of editing a document or viewing an email. We would love to do that feature, but are currently constrained by the fact that most OpenSocial platforms (including iGoogle) do not let 3rd party providers the level of freedom to switch to an expanded view mode as and when needed. You will find this feature for zoho gadgets inside zoho personal and Zoho business dashboards which will be released shortly.
Naveen. V
on April 16, 2009 at 11:16 AM - LINK(Zoho Gadgets Team)
Hello,
Jake here from the Microsoft Office Live Outreach Team. I strongly agree with your concluding sentences. Users are on Facebook in order to spend time on Facebook, and a Facebook gadget or application should allow them to do so. I feel that a better step for brands that wish to create a presence on Facebook should do so on Facebook’s terms and create a page within the social network to attract fans (like Zoho has done here: http://tinyurl.com/zohofacebook), rather than direct users outside of the network to check out their product. They can then market their brand within the boundaries of the social network without leading the community away from the Facebook interface. Another similar case is Microsoft’s Office Live Students Facebook page which provides students (the original Facebook community) information about job and internship applications and resume advice. The content for the most part lives on the Facebook page, and the articles that do not exist on the page serve mainly to benefit readers by informing them about doctoring their resumes and preparing for job interviews and so on. The page puts the fans first and its brand second. Take a look and tell me if you agree: http://www.facebook.com/officelivestudent
- Jake
MSFT Office Live Outreach Team
on April 16, 2009 at 12:02 PM - LINK