Zoho Meets Facebook: Match Made in Web Heaven?
Valentine's Day may be months away, but a celebration is underway for a match seemingly made in Web 2.0 heaven: Zoho Apps on Facebook! — Zoho's school play ground looking logo will fit right in with the youthful Facebookers!
Context & Ripple Effects
Zoho is riding two arcs at once. Since Facebook opened its app platform in May 2007, developers have flooded in — enough that CNET dubbed it a "feeding frenzy" by mid-June — while analysts have begun arguing Facebook risks becoming the new AOL, a walled garden that reshapes how software reaches users. Zoho, meanwhile, has spent late June burnishing its credentials as the most formidable challenger to Google Apps in Web-based productivity, including shipping iZoho for the iPhone in days using its own APIs.
The Facebook integration itself was confirmed across TechCrunch, AccMan and Zoho's own blog on July 3, giving the story unusual pickup breadth for what is, functionally, a distribution deal: Zoho's office apps now live inside the social network where Facebook's explosive user growth does the marketing. Industry observers are simultaneously debating what a Facebook app is actually worth, citing four value factors — so Zoho's move lands right in the middle of that unresolved question.
First-order effects
- Zoho gains a viral distribution channel into Facebook's rapidly growing user base, extending the reach of a suite already positioned against Google Apps.
- Zoho's multi-surface strategy — Facebook apps plus the June 28 iZoho iPhone launch built on its own APIs — makes it one of the first productivity vendors to treat third-party platforms as primary front ends rather than add-ons.
Second-order effects
- Google Apps faces a competitor that can piggyback on Facebook's social graph for adoption, pressuring it to respond with distribution moves of its own.
- Other SaaS vendors watching the debate over what a Facebook app is worth must decide whether to follow Zoho onto the platform or risk ceding early presence during the land grab CNET described.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, social networks evolve into operating-system-style platforms that control distribution of Web software — the dynamic behind the analyst's comparison of Facebook to AOL.
- Web office suites shift from competing on features alone to competing on wherever users already are, making platform partnerships a structural requirement rather than an experiment.
The trend: Web-based productivity vendors are racing to distribute through social platforms, turning Facebook's 2007 app boom into a new battleground for the office-suite market.