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A good example of that would be today in e-mail we're letting you bring together your POP accounts, and aggregate those things into Hotmail. It would be a nice thing for you to be able to do with photos and with files so that you can get to all that information from one place. That's a place where bringing in other Internet services would really help and allow customers to say, "Hey, I have my photos stored in this other place, but I really want to be able to view them and send them around using Windows Live."
Another example is communicating and sharing with people where I think that what we're finding at least is people are on lots of different social networks, and they're using lots of different ways to communicate. At the same time, they probably have one contact list--it's inconvenient to have two--so a notion where it's easy for you to communicate with different people, regardless of the network they're on.
If you think about the evolution that e-mail went through where it used to be you could only communicate with people on your e-mail server, and then it was only people from your service provider, and then it became e-mail addresses are universal--I think we'll see that same trend with a lot of the social-networking work, where for basic communication you'll just be able to find people and send it to them, and you'll want to do that, regardless of the network they're on.
What is your view of where Windows Live fits into the social-networking world? Have you guys kind of resigned yourself to the fact that Windows Live isn't in and of itself going to be a social network?
Jones: The thing I think about with social networking is it means a lot of things to a lot of people. Is Flickr a social-networking site? I think it is. It's a way for people to find each other and share things and communicate. It's a very focused one on photo sharing. Is YouTube a social-networking site? Sort of.
So, if the definition of social-networking site is a way to discover other people, then we do think Windows Live is a great way to do that today, and, in fact, Messenger is in particular a service where it's super easy to discover other people. It turns out to be very presence-oriented.
One thing you do in your personal life is manage all your information, and manage your life. We think Windows Live is going to do a great job at that.
A second thing you do in your personal life is just stay in touch with people. You want to send someone a Christmas card, you want to know when they've changed their job, but they're not really a friend of yours, they're just on your contact list. I think Windows Live is going to do a great job at that, and already has with the features that we've added in this release.
A third thing you want to do is do sharing and really intimate communication with your friends and your family and these small groups of people, and that's an area where I think that nobody has really done, just share with your family or just share with your friends well, and I think that's an area for us to explore.
There was a presentation by one of the folks at Microsoft at Georgia Tech that talked a little bit about the future of Messenger. Can you talk a little bit about that? It mentioned some things like interoperability with AOL and Google as being in the works.
Jones: I think that the person works on my team, and they were quoted out of context. We obviously have some work that we're working on with Messenger in terms of the platform and the direction that we're headed, but the things that were quoted and said, they aren't on our roadmap in any kind of public way.
Where are things as far as interoperability with some of the other folks?
Jones: We have an agreement with Yahoo on interop, and that's about the extent of what we've done. I can't discuss things on other networks, but certainly we've had conversations with other folks. And the work that we've done on our contact interchange is just an example of the kinds of things that we'll expect to do in the future.
I do think over time IM networks are going to interoperate. It's just challenging from a business perspective for everybody to agree to do that right now.
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Microsoft user. You will at the very least have problems
accessing some of the Live services. I used to like Hotmail but
after switching over to Mac for my personal computer. I found
out that not only is Safari browser not supported by Microsoft
with Hotmail Live but Firefox is also having problems with the
service. Oh, of course IE 6 and 7 both work perfectly. Imagine
that? Well, Microsoft I think your just pushing people further
away from being Microsoft product user's.
and 2 with no issue with my hotmail either.
Maybe its the classic keyboard input device at fault?
I aslo use my Live/MSN on my celll service with no issues. *shrug*
Which is a higher number, users of MS Dead or people whose favorite sandwich is liverwurst and sardines? That's a tough one.
Or are you just making this stuff up as you go along? Because it's not working.
Now, IMHO, the big mistake that Microsoft has done is brand everything Windows Live. MSN Messenger is a very strong brand. In fact for many people 'MSN' has become a verb for IM, like google is for search!
I think the Microsoft people are completely out of their minds for trashing this brand.
They clearly don't know what they are doing: there is no point in branding internet services with "Windows", it sounds backwards to consumers.
It's not selling any more windows, which is already dominant, and doesn't need to be pushed anymore. These guys don't understand brands, they seem to be naming things around their internal corporate structure. You don't trash something that you have built and that's already been burned in consumer's mind.
Microsoft has proven to me by 15 years of actions that they are sincerely not interested in making services universally available through superior offerings but hook-and-hold cross-sales of complimentery products.
Oh, you want to use Windows Live? Better be using IE 7. Want to use IE 7, well.. your going to have to be running XP/Vista, or we have a nice windows phone XXX that you'll love! It's sure to work with that services. etc etc.
The reality of it is I think people are just tired of being sucked into services that in many cases are superior to competitors, only to be forced to use other products that are vastly inferior as a side effect.
Because I have been caught in this trap many times, I've resorted to trusting providers such as google for my online services (Gmail, photos, etc) and only resort to Microsoft services for things that are absolutely critical or there are zero alternatives, despite the technical merit of the product Microsoft has.
I imagine it will take a while for Microsoft to rebuild trust with many people before services such as Live take off like a wild-fire, in the same manner that Google's services have attracted people in droves.
And Google isn't that better of an alternative. Google's notorious for using private data to help adSense advertisers, and some people wouldn't feel safe that advertisers have a big eye watching them.
And Microsoft is still working on a lot of their Live stuff. Some of them aren't even good enough to move on, while some are. It's a work in progress, and until they finish, then would they start moving up.
I don't know what all this talk about cross browser/platform is all about... My wife (as novice a user as you are likely to find) uses Hotmail on her MacBook almost daily and seems to do just fine. Can someone cite a specific example? Not saying you're wrong, but what I've seen works, but I have not seen much other than image search and Hotmail.
Video Search is also pretty neat. On most video thumbnails, you can hover over them, and a preview plays, right in the results.
You can also favorite them if you have a Live ID. And Video Search doesn't just look at YouTube, but practically ALL video sites.
And their web search is getting as good as Google's as well. They beefed up their index, and they're also putting the same extended links Google has had for awhile. And the Instant Answers they have is also a plus to me.
Isn't competition great? I love alternatives.
You can see the OE roots in Live Mail, but it is a new product. I have been using this in various beta forms for about 6 months and it is now my exclusive POP mail client. The junk mail controls are superb! The Photo mail is very cool (similar to that in Outlook 2007 but not as bloated).
The downside is that I believe you need MS Desktop Search installed for the near instantaneous photo and mail indexing. I'm not 100% sure on this requirement since I was switching back and forth between Google and MS Search anyway. If you really prefer Google or Yahoo search over MS, then you will need to decide if running these new Live apps is worth jumping ship. To me, I saw no real difference between Google and MS, so there was no decision to be made -- I'll stick with MS Search to run these two other products. I think running multiple indexers would be dumb.
There is a difference.
Microsoft is evil.
Live Search isn't slow. I don't see how. I've used Live Search and Google Search side-by-side, and both find queries in less than a second. How's that slow?
And the links I click, not surprisingly, go to a web page.
So either you're making this up, or you're an idiot. Maybe both.
Dave
- Try Video search too. It's also pretty neat.
- by quikboy2 January 2, 2008 11:25 PM PST
- I have to agree. Image Search rocks.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(22 Comments)Video Search is also pretty neat. On most video thumbnails, you can hover over them, and a preview plays, right in the results.
You can also favorite them if you have a Live ID. And Video Search doesn't just look at YouTube, but practically ALL video sites.
And their web search is getting as good as Google's as well. They beefed up their index, and they're also putting the same extended links Google has had for awhile. And the Instant Answers they have is also a plus to me.
Isn't competition great? I love alternatives.