• http://blogs.zoho.com/general/getting-productive-with-facebook/

Earlier this month yet another major provider of web-based productivity tools, ThinkFree, announced the launch of a Facebook version. Given that Facebook variants are typically less supple than their open-web counterparts, it has not always been plain to me what the fuss was about. An excerpt cited in a Zoho blog is illuminating:

Imagine, students can find their classmates on Facebook using the courses feature ... and then work collaboratively with them using Zoho.

Right. Whatever else Facebook might be, it is also still a directory. One of the downsides of web applications all along has been that it can be difficult to capitalize on their collaborative capacities when one's potential collaborators are not registered users, or registered under some other username or email address. The question of directory integration comes up repeatedly in institutional evaluations of soft- and web-ware. With near ubiquitous participation among college students, the Facebook directory may be doing an end-run around institutionally maintained directories, at least for certain purposes.