box_notes_hilites_736x368Box this morning launched Box Notes, a collaborative document creation and editing feature with a social twist but (so far at least) not a big mobile focus.

aaronlevie
Aaron Levie

It debuted in private beta today. Box Notes becomes the latest service looking for a niche in a market long dominated by Microsoft and its Office suite of applications, competing against Google Apps and many others. The move comes less than a week after Apple announced that it would start offering its iWork productivity suite for free on iOS devices.

Features of Box Notes include real-time collaboration and lightweight editing, along with annotations and social elements including avatars.

Box had been hinting at this possibility through its recent moves. The company, run by Mercer Island, Wash., native Aaron Levie, last year hired Sam Shillace, the creator of Writely, which formed the foundation for Google Docs; and recently added former Microsoft Office and Windows chief Steven Sinofsky as a special adviser.

Box Notes is more of a social note-taking application than a full word-processor, explains Matt Rosoff of CITEworld. Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet is likewise skeptical about Box Notes challenging Microsoft Office, noting that Microsoft has also moved into online document collaboration and editing with its Office Web Apps.

In a recent interview with GeekWire, Box CEO Levie downplayed the company’s ambitions of competing against Microsoft.  “Not so much, really,” he said. “In fact, if anything, we’d love to get closer to Microsoft.”

 

 

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