Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Guest — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 13:19:12 -0000

So why doesn't Steve or Bill come out and tell us what we are supposed to pay attention to? Do people really care if the ship is turning? How does MS turning the ship affect me today? I care about cool products that are available today!

BTW: I finally gave MSN Desktop Search a try and it's pretty cool. Regardless of what direction the ship is turning.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Alden Neuberger — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 12:42:51 -0000

Very often displaying one kind of cluelessness provides us with a window the reveals others.

In your case, Robert, we see in your condescending tone regarding the "woman's touch" which Jenny Lam brings to MS products, and which (lucky her) your wife brings to your house a very important clue as to what you think about the work you do.

All it needs is a "touch." A restyling. A staging, even. And then we'll automagically and finally "get it."

But maybe it's crap from the beginning? Maybe it's founded on crap assumptions, a desperate response to a situation which is evolving away from your control? I can't even decide which of your twinned displays of ignorance is more offensive to me...although if I was a MSFT shareholder the answer would be crystal clear.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

John C. Welch — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 12:24:06 -0000

I hear the presentation by Bill Gates was a major cock-up! You’d think he’d get things right. He should learn from the master

Oh my god...that's what MS's corporate graphics team turns out? What, you hire 7 year olds? Pale white text on a light blue background?

Christ, when it's Bill Gates, you'd think you'd want it to look professional.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

sam — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 10:10:45 -0000

I have to agree with Jason Lefkowicz (http://www.jasonlefkowitz.n....

I didn't know about the existence of start.com until I read his post, but as far as working, useful and customizable portals with a good user experience, start.com is far more appealing to me than live.com.

If I were looking for a customizable portal, I might use something like this. But I'm not looking for a customizable portal. Portals are lame. Google's portal is lame. I don't want RSS feeds on a webpage -- what's the point when I have a newsreader? And is going to a webpage to read news directly really that much of a hassle? Is it going to kill me to load boingboing.net rather than just look at the feed, especially considering how feeds often lag?

Del.icio.us might be the closest thing to a portal that I'm ever going to use, but it's giving me something else: community, and the opportunity to discover and explore my interests.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Adrian Lee — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 04:48:46 -0000

I don't care if it's a rip off of someone elses idea if it works better. I don't care if the launch demo's didn't go very well, I wasn't there, I didn't want to be there. I care about how it works. If it works and I find it useful, I'll use it. If not, I won't.

So I'm a little confused that after you make a big thing about posting http://scobleizer.wordpress... Ross Mayfield's problems with MS, you then wonder why people are less than enthused about a new service which breaks number 7

"On clients, they want to choose the highest-reach platforms. That doesn’t mean a Windows app. Or even an app that runs only in IE. It must run on every variant of Linux and Macintosh too."

very badly. "Coming soon in Firefox" is a load of crap, you've just announced to the world that once again you only really care about IE. Firefox will probably come in 6 months or something, while us Opera users are still left in the dark, are we going to get supported or not? I've read around to see if it works in Safari or anything.

So after trying to say that you want to do something about the list of problems, people are then nagging at you because this big new thing you've launched breaks "5) That Microsoft doesn’t care about small businesses(markets, those browsers with less market share for example)", "7) On clients, they want to choose the highest-reach platforms.", "10) More security.", and they are jsut the easy to argue ones.

I ignored gmail untill it worked in Opera. I'll ignore this until it does as well.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Matt — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 03:49:13 -0000

Does Jenny Lam blog?

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Adam Loving — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 01:36:52 -0000

I follow how live.com is a shift to delivering applications in an open and standarized manner (IE via Javascript and HTML), but I don't follow how it represents a change to a services business. Is it because the goals of Microsoft (the software company) and MSN (the user community services) are now aligned?

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

BillSaysThis — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:52:25 -0000

Robert, I agree with a lot of the comments here--the announcements yesterday were premature, MSFT should have waited until there was more meat--and I'll go one further.

Can you fix what already ships today? I have Hotmail accounts that are sucked down to Outlook using a 3rd party utility (since MSN rudely shut off the direct feed) and I have the junk mail filters turned on for both systems. How come Hotmail lets through messages that Outlook marks as spam? If anything Hotmail's filters should be fresher than Outlook's.

If you want me to move to new online services instead of desktop apps, show me you can make them work as well first.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Diego — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 20:55:18 -0000

I hear the presentation by Bill Gates was a major cock-up! You'd think he'd get things right. He should learn from the master :)

Gates' lame slides: http://writersblocklive.com...

Those slides do look like crap!

http://writersblocklive.com...

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Christopher Coulter — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 19:51:50 -0000

If you wanted people to PAY attention to the RIGHT thing, well clearly state that RIGHT thing and show some EVIDENCE of such. So this was a big internal memo, spelled out in the form of a vague idea no one was quite sure of, all via a pre-alpha crashy demo shown to all the world's press?

And now your cage handlers have made you aware of the supposed big big picture? And you are blaming us for 'not getting it'?. Amazing arrogance.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

John C. Welch — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 19:49:04 -0000

I know, a new drinking game...every time Scoble waves his NDA penis, you take a big hit from a can of Pabst or Rolling Rock, but you must let half of it drain down your shirt. Whenever Brandon does it, you have to take a shot of Mad Dog 20/20, but you must fling the contents of the shot against your face, and attempt to lap it up before it stains your clothes.

That way, you work in both Microsoft's incompetence at judging its audience, (crappy beer and MD 20/20), and its inability to do even simple tasks correctly, (the spillage).

I think it could be a hit.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

John C. Welch — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 19:45:07 -0000

Well Brandon, at least when Google rips something off it works right.

When Microsoft rips something off, they turn it to crap...

In the end, while both companies are crooks, Microsoft is turning into a bunch of incompetent crooks. Way to go man, dig that Web 2.0 that only works with IE on Windows.

Could you look any dumber? I don't see how.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Christopher Coulter — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 19:38:10 -0000

A services company? Oh brother. Consult your history books, this has been tried time and time again. You can't do content, you can't do services, you do SOFTWARE (and increasingly you can't even do that). Big difference between an applications company and a services company, you are talking really a whole new company. It is simply not possible with your current makeup. And what TYPE of services? IBM Global Services? Or just applicational hosted services? Return of the ASP? If it was a 'services' change, why the heck, didn't Gates just say so? If Ray has really turned the ship around to "services", then the post-Microsoft era is about to begin. This isn't a shift, your vaulted Execs may think that, but it's just really copying your competitors, this being the one time you can't (or aren't) buying them out.

Soon we’ll ship a new version of that. It’s awesome. Audience thrilling awesome.

Hahahah, always 'awesome' one version in the future. So silly, so lunkheaded, and not how you market, but yet you walk into it, time and time again.

PS - Wow, Brandon, I think I have found someone actually more blindly stupidly shrillish than Scoble. That takes talent, congrats.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Brandon Paddock — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 19:11:07 -0000

MSFTShareHolder said: "Has anyone else noticed that MS blatantly ripped off the personalized Google interface for live.com (except that it doesn’t work with firefox)?"

You mean... Has anyone noticed that GOOGLE blatantly ripped off the personalized START.COM interface (which does work in Firefox and Live.com will soon too).

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

kosso — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:12:32 -0000

Rather than it being all about attention, I would say it has lots to do with ATTENTROPY limitation (yes I made that word up - but it works!).

I think it's relatively easy to get attention by offering something that people want and doing it in a nice and easy, stable way. But the secret is keeping that attention. Nurturing it. Growing it. Being nice to it. Respecting it.

Indeed, we need to trust those who are doing that to us. They need to respect that we are the people driving their vision (and let's not forget - business). Eventually you become friends and who knows.. lovers? ;)

If Microsoft can pull that off, then they'll generate a whole lotta love for a whole lotta time of a whole lotta people.

And I for one, wish them the best of luck instigating the love affair!

I'm looking forward to trying out the new messenger and VOIP. It's a shame, I am assuming, that it won't be able to record calls as MP3 - WMA possibly. We shall see. But I know which would generate the most L.O.V.E

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Martin Ennemoser — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:55:26 -0000

I don't understand this whole applications/services company thing. What's wrong with companies creating applications? All companies offering services need applications. So, please Microsoft, don't stop building great applications.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

flabbygums — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:50:23 -0000

Uh, i think live.com has been done. They are getting 12% of ALL ad revenue and it's called myspace.

Hosting exchange servers wont compete w/ google. All dogs have their day - today it's google.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Ben — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:26:08 -0000

You go, Scoble. I can't imagine that the snipers here have much idea what it takes to change the strategic direction of a company the size of Microsoft - and one whose legacy businesses remain so stunningly profitable.

Windows/Office Live is absolutely right. I'll use it, once you've built it :) Let's hope MS saves the day and stops us all turning into google slaves.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Richard Reukema — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:11:24 -0000

I'm confused Robert - there is a huge difference between an applications company and a services company. Although I may have heard 'turn, turn, turn', I'm pretty sure they did not said drop anchor, and switch boats!

IMHO I would say your statement is bold to say the least, perhaps even foolish. If it was that simple, why didn't Bill Gates say it that plainly?

You've got a very big megaphone Robert - it can do one of two things - make you a big problem, or make you a valuable asset. Right now you are an asset, be careful not inadvertently switch sides

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Richard — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:11:13 -0000

It means that preparing a dysfunctional demo with some dated web technologies makes MS to look like a service company this morning?
I understand that your focus is much broader what you wanted to show yesterday but so far - disaster.

MS is an application company trying to use a web to preserve their golden eggs (Office and Windows). That's the whole story. It's not about services - it's about how to tied up web AND golden eggs together.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Jimbo — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:10:28 -0000

Does your wife know that she decorating a place that you call "my home" not "our home"?

I hope so, for your sake...

I think maybe you've seen a few too many "my documents" icons...

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Adam Carstens — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:07:02 -0000

Are MSFT shareholders supposed to be grateful that MSFT is now turning, even though it's still leaking?

Just what do those 61,000 people DO every day to earn their keep (besides tell each other and us how brilliant and hardworking they are).

Quick back of the envelope calc:

Google = 5,000 employees / 1.6 billion in quarterly revenue = $320,000 per employee.

Microsoft = 61,000 employees / 9.7 billion in quarterly revenue = $159,000 per employee

Are we to infer as hardworking and brilliant MSFT's people are, Google's people are twice as much so?

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

Dvorak C. Thurrot — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 15:47:34 -0000

Microsoft has over 60,000 employees, we expect more from Microsoft because you keep asking premium prices for your products. So don't say 'it's coming, just hold on' actually provide us the product, this whole situation reeks of the way Microsoft has handled Vista.

It's coming out soon and it will revolutionize everything! Now it's coming out much, much later and has features that Apple was able to do years before a much larger Microsoft.

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

MSFTShareholder — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 15:45:09 -0000

Has anyone else noticed that MS blatantly ripped off the personalized Google interface for live.com (except that it doesn't work with firefox)?

As a shareholder who lives in Seattle and, therefore, benefits greatly from a healthy, prosperous MS, I'm concerned. The frequent major re-orgs, all-hands meetings and hyped pronouncements about "new strategic directions" are beginning to look suspiciously like a company that doesn't know where it's going. I have an awful lot of friends at MS who are jumping ship to the Google operation in Kirkland...

Re: Joel, and others, give us hell for Live.com

My Name — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 15:24:42 -0000

I dont think this is a "turn" or a "rudder shift" at all.

You are just copying your competitors, imitating their products. That is the same thing you have always done. I guess this time the difference is you can't afford to outright buy out Google...