Google makes Docs more social, adds discussion and @ replies

Google Inc. has been rolling out plenty of new features to its Docs productivity suite over the last few months, most noticeably enabling editing on mobile devices in response to the increasing proliferation of smart phones and tablets. Now the search giant has added another one of those features you didn’t realise was missing until you try it, “Discussions.”

Designed to replace the current “Comments” feature, the new discussions functionality sits somewhere between in-docs chat and annotations, allowing document collaborators to talk about their document in real-time in a chat-box style popup. A killer social feature of this new system is the ability to @-invite collaborators. For example if I was editing a document and wanted to invite a colleague, I simply pop open the Discussions box, and upon typing an “@” will be given a list of most-contacted individuals. Including them in the discussion will send a notification and give them editing access to the document straight away.

Instead of wholesale deleting Discussions once finished, you now simply mark them as “Resolved.”

Google have showcased the new feature in a remarkably funky video, which is eerily reminiscent of the now-defunct Wave, Google’s attempt to introduce a similar featureset into e-mail.

Due to the complexity of the changes, Discussions will only be available in newly-created documents, but we’d suggest you try it out – it’s kinda fun!