Microsoft said late Monday that is suspending access to an MSN China microblogging site amid allegations the service is based on code swiped from a rival.
Canadian start-up Plurk lashed out at Microsoft earlier on Monday, saying that 80 percent of the code for Juku appeared to be lifted directly from its service.
Microsoft reiterated late Monday that it is investigating the matter but issued a statement saying it was pulling down the Juku feature while it looks into things.
"Earlier today, questions arose over a feature developed by a third-party vendor for our MSN China joint venture," Microsoft said in a statement. "Because questions have been raised about the code base comprising the service, MSN China will be suspending access to the Juku beta feature temporarily while we investigate the matter fully."
Microsoft added that the investigation was slowed by the fact that when questions were first raised it was the middle of the night in China.
"Now that the day has begun in China, our teams are working hard to track down the information," Microsoft said.
The company also confirmed what a source previously told CNET, namely that Microsoft's MSN China joint venture "contracted with an independent vendor" to create the MSN Juku feature, which debuted last month and is still in beta.
Earlier on Monday, Microsoft said it was investigating the issue.
For its part, Plurk said it is still trying to decide how to handle things.
"We're not entirely sure but we are exploring our options," Plurk said in its blog posting. "We have been seeking advice from respected colleagues, responding to press inquiries and gathering facts on the timeline of events and parties involved here to understand why and how this took place."
It's the second time in recent weeks that Microsoft has been accused of lifting other's work in its products. Last month, the company was forced to pull down a tool for loading Windows 7 onto Netbooks after allegations that the product improperly included open-source code. Microsoft later apologized and last week re-released the tool under the GPL open-source license. Microsoft also blamed a third-party vendor in that case.
Plurk accuses Microsoft China of ripping off its design and code to create its Juku microblogging service.
(Credit: Plurk)Aiming to stay relevant, Microsoft is introducing a new look for its MSN.com home page.
Although MSN gets far less attention than the company's Bing or Windows Live efforts, the home page remains an important economic engine for Microsoft's online business, as well as a significant source of search traffic for Bing.
Along with redesigning the MSN home page, Microsoft also gave the site's butterfly logo a new look.
(Credit: Microsoft)"We believe it's an important asset for Microsoft," said MSN general manager Bob Visse.
The site is still the top portal in about 25 of the 46 markets, with about 600 million unique users globally and 100 million in the U.S, where it trails Yahoo in popularity.
The redesign, which has been in the works for months, bears quite a bit of resemblance to the one that Microsoft had been testing in France.
Microsoft late Tuesday began rolling out the new MSN home page (click for preview), which it says will become widely available in the U.S. early in 2010.
With its new look, the home page has about half as many links as the previous incarnation, focusing instead on a few categories, such as video, news, shopping, and search.
The old site had dozens of text links at the top and bottom of the page for everything from horoscopes to white pages to a free trial of MSN's dial-up Internet service.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see this is a very cluttered and busy site," Visse said of the existing page.
The company has, in the past, tried to make changes that its users saw as too radical, such as a 2007 overhaul of Hotmail that the company was forced to significantly scale back. Visse said he isn't as worried about that, given that users were already complaining that the site was both dated and overstuffed with links.
"We were, frankly, at a point where customers are complaining about the clutter," he said.
Microsoft is also trying to tap into the popularity of social networks, adding a column on the right-hand side that lets users peek at their Windows Live, Twitter, and Facebook feeds, and even update their status or post a tweet. As before, users can also see a preview of their Hotmail in-box.
But it will take its time in jumping on the Web apps bandwagon, with plans to offer several Silverlight-based apps on the right-hand side of the redesigned page at a later date. In the past, MSN users have not customized their pages to a large degree, and so Microsoft is going to take a wait-and-see approach before it decides whether it will roll out more apps than the Windows Live, Twitter, and Facebook apps available at launch.
By contrast, Yahoo, perhaps MSN's largest competitor, has bet the farm on the popularity of Web apps on the home page, redesigning the entire Yahoo experience with that in mind. It's still early, but since the redesign went live Yahoo has seen a 20 percent increase in the amount of time spent on the home page, it said last week.
The company has decided to scrap altogether a more radical overhaul that it tested in Brazil. That site, geared towards Brazil's highly social online population, allowed people to share videos by dragging the video screen onto a contact in one's social network.
"It was too radical, even for that audience," Visse said. "It's not going to ship for a final release."
MSN was among the Microsoft units hit by companywide layoffs earlier this year, but things have stabilized, Visse said.
"I wouldn't say we are growing headcount, but we aren't reducing," he said.
The 2009 redesign of MSN features a new logo and new look with fewer links and more videos and images.
(Credit: Microsoft)Correction, 6:35 a.m. PDT: This story initially gave an incorrect launch date for the new MSN home page.
Bing may be catching on as a new search engine, but it has yet to generate growth in ad dollars for Microsoft, according to a report released Tuesday.
Microsoft's share of search engine ad spending for the second quarter stayed flat at less than 6 percent, according to the report by research firm SearchIgnite. That's the same level it's been for the past several years.
"Microsoft appears to be focusing its efforts on driving consumer interest and capturing increased search query share," said Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite. "We have not yet seen this translate into more paid search advertising dollars for Microsoft, although typically consumer adoption precedes advertiser adoption."
Meanwhile, Microsoft's one-time acquisition target Yahoo lost ground in the second quarter, with only 17 percent of the market. But top dog Google continued to rise, grabbing a 77 percent market share for search engine ad spending.
(Credit:
SearchIgnite)
However, don't count out Bing just yet. The report noted that research groups have tracked Bing's share of the search query market growing since its launch last month. Ad spending typically lags behind search queries. If consumer interest continues, Bing could enjoy a boost in ad dollars for the third quarter.
Overall, the market for search engine ad spending flourished in the second quarter. The report noted that retail firms spent 36 percent more on paid search engines than in 2008's second quarter. Spending just for the month of June shot up 55 percent from June 2008.
(Credit:
SearchIgnite)
"We've seen very strong paid search spend from retailers for the last several quarters," said Barnette, "a trend that can be attributed to an increase in retailers' promotional activity as they turn to heavy discounting and sales to drive purchases."
For this latest report, SearchIgnite tracked 500 marketers using Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Bing for the quarter ended June 30.
MSN has made several entries--and several exits--from the music service business, but apparently it is ready to try again, at least in the United Kingdom.
"In the coming months, MSN is planning to launch a new music-streaming service in beta via its Music channel in the U.K.," a Microsoft representative told CNET News. "At this stage we won't be confirming the details behind this but more information will be available soon and will be communicated in due course."
Microsoft first mentioned the service in a report in the Telegraph newspaper.
"Music is an important area for Microsoft," MSN executive Peter Bale told the newspaper. "We are looking at launching a music-streaming service imminently."
Microsoft already has a music-streaming product in the U.K. through a partner, however this new service would be based on in-house technology acquired through its Musiwave purchase.
Microsoft launched an MSN Music download business in 2004, but pulled the plug two years later and started promoting RealNetworks' Rhapsody as part of a settlement with that company. It then launched the Urge service in partnership with MTV before shifting its energy to the Zune service and player.
Microsoft has been testing different search bars to see which ones drive the most traffic to Bing. Shown here is the one that appeared on the MSN site on Friday.
(Credit: CNET)The planned fall revamp of MSN isn't just about giving the butterfly a fresh coat of paint. Microsoft also hopes to drive more people to its search engine.
The company has been toying with different search box designs to see which ones lead to the most queries. As it stands, the MSN portal already accounts for half of Microsoft's search engine traffic. Comparatively few people typed in queries straight from Microsoft's Live.com address (now Bing.com)
"A big part of my job is figuring out how I pull the Bing experience into MSN in a way that makes sense," Microsoft vice president Erik Jorgensen said in an interview this week.
One way of banking on MSN, he said, is by posting features on the site that tie in to the company's search engine. The company has talked about ways it can write features that push folks to Microsoft's local, shopping, and travel search engines--each among the most profitable parts of the search business and the areas in which Microsoft has focused.
The software maker is also looking at ways it can tie MSN features to the strongest areas of Bing--local, shopping, and travel search.
(Credit: Microsoft)To make that work, Microsoft needs to ensure that it is less visually jarring when one moves back and forth between MSN and Bing.
"Frankly, that's one I think we haven't done well," Jorgensen said. "I think in the fall that's something we've got to tackle."
In its first two weeks, Bing has managed to pick up some market share, but the key will be sustaining those gains in the coming weeks and months.
Beyond driving traffic from MSN, Microsoft is also counting on deals with PC makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell to get more people to give Bing a try.
The company has said it wants to pick up at least a couple points of market share in the first year, although it will need well more than that to truly compete economically with Google. Hence the company's never-ending talks with Yahoo, which is No. 2 in the search market with about 20 percent of the business.
Microsoft is testing a revamped version of its MSN home page in France that features fewer channels, more video, and a direct connection to a user's Hotmail in-box.
(Credit: Microsoft)Although most of the discussion of Microsoft's online business has been around Bing, its new search engine, Microsoft is also working on a fall revamp for MSN, its decade-old portal site.
Though often overlooked by Microsoft watchers, the MSN portal remains critically important to Microsoft's online business. Its home page is the crown jewel of its display ad business and MSN is also responsible for about half of the company's Internet search traffic. And, despite the notion that portals are passe, Microsoft says its research shows that 37 percent of Internet users still rely on a portal as an important source of information.
"It's not for everyone, but for a good chunk of the market, it's a way people can make sense of the Internet," MSN Vice President Erik Jorgensen said in an interview this week.
To stay relevant, Microsoft is working on overhauling MSN in a few key ways. In particular, the company is trying to add a limited amount of personalization as well as more social media features. Microsoft is also trying to downplay the myriad of channels that date back to the days when its portal, like Yahoo and AOL, aimed to be a directory of the Internet.
But, as it rethinks the MSN site, Microsoft must also tread lightly, mindful of its experience a few years back when it tried to radically alter its Hotmail service. The changes, intended to enable the service to compete with Gmail and Yahoo, proved too jarring for many of its users.
Indeed, the MSN home page, which dates back to 1998 when Microsoft grouped its bevy of Web properties under the MSN name, has changed remarkably little in recent years.
On a number of occasions over the years, Microsoft has tried to freshen up the image of the portal. Back in 2000, Microsoft added the butterfly logo amid a big ad campaign.
In 2006, the company lured MSNBC's John Nicol out of retirement in its most recent major effort to revitalize the site.
Much of that effort centered on bolstering the site's video content. Microsoft dipped its toe into original programming and also brought some key events to MSN, including the Live Earth concert and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Under his tenure, Microsoft also announced Soapbox, an effort to compete in the user generated content space with YouTube.
Soapbox, however, proved less than successful and Jorgensen said this week that Microsoft plans to scale back the site, possibly eliminating the ability of users to post their own videos directly to the site.
Getting personal
One of the areas that Microsoft continues to tinker with is just how much to personalize the site. This has been a tricky balance for Microsoft. It has offered products such as its Start.com (and later Live.com) page, which began as a blank canvas onto which users could plug all kinds of content modules. However, that proved to have only niche appeal.
"There is a limit to how many people are interested in putting in that level of work," said Jorgensen, who assumed the top MSN spot last year after Nicol left the post. Jorgensen also continues to run Microsoft's local and mobile search efforts.
This time around, MSN is relying on Microsoft's software algorithms and machine learning to do "clustering" of content based on a user's demographics.
Microsoft is also trying to use software, rather than humans, to help choose which stories get placed where on MSN. Instead of having its editors update the pages four times a day, the revamped MSN will see things shifting nearly constantly based on the data the company is getting back on which stories are clicking with users.
At the end of the day, Jorgensen hopes to create a site that has more software know-how than Yahoo and is more human than Google.
Some of the MSN changes are already being tested in various parts of the world. In France, for example, the software maker is testing the new user interface with fewer channels and more prominent video (see image at top of post). In Brazil, a far more radical remake of MSN features a social media bar where people can drag videos to share them with their circle of friends (see image at bottom of post).
Microsoft is still figuring out how drastic to make the changes and how gradually it needs to roll them out.
The software maker is also toying with how much to segment its audience. For example, the company has an MSN Today screen it shows users as they log into Windows Live Messenger. For the past three months, Microsoft has been showing four different screens depending on whether a user is male or female and whether he or she is over or under 25.
In the U.S., the company also offered some users a choice of viewing the standard MSN home page when they go to the main portal or if they would instead prefer an entertainment-only version.
"It can't be one size fits all," Jorgensen said.
In Brazil, Microsoft is testing a more radical overhaul of the MSN site, featuring a social media bar that users can use to share video with their social circle.
(Credit: Microsoft)
SAN FRANCISCO--In the coming months, Microsoft plans to significantly scale back Soapbox, the video site it once hoped might take on YouTube in the user-generated content arena.
In an interview on Tuesday, Microsoft Vice President Erik Jorgensen said Soapbox is one of the areas that Microsoft is pulling back on in the wake of a tough economic environment. His unit also recently pulled the plug on Microsoft Money, the company's personal finance software product.
Soapbox launched in 2006--the same year Google announced its deal to buy YouTube--but never emerged as a significant threat to the market leader. (See video, left, for a review from Soapbox's early days.)
In 2007, Microsoft stopped allowing new users to access the site while it added filtering technology aimed at reducing the amount of copyright content posted on its site. It returned a few months later, but has been largely an afterthought in the video market, except as a home for Microsoft's own videos.
Microsoft hopes to transform Soapbox, originally code-named Warhol, from an also-ran in the user-generated content space into a forum where bloggers and citizen journalists can post videos relevant to areas in which MSN focuses, categories like entertainment, lifestyle, and finance.
Jorgensen
"We definitely look at it and say we want Soapbox to stand for something and add to our overall video strategy," he said, noting that being a broad user-generated video player was too expensive in light of the current economy.
While Microsoft will focus on such content, it's still unclear whether it will continue to allow users to freely upload their videos or if it will require some sort of editorial selection of the movies before they make it onto the site.
"We haven't decided whether you just continue to support it or whether it is too expensive and out of our focus to do," he said.
In the wake of additional layoffs on Tuesday, Microsoft is scaling back--but not totally eliminating--several products. After cutting 1,400 jobs in January, Microsoft said on Tuesday that it is cutting more than 3,000 more jobs.
Among those products affected are Microsoft's ResponsePoint phone system, its .Net Micro Framework, and its MSN Direct Service.
Microsoft said it will continue to sell and support the initial version of ResponsePoint, which is aimed at small businesses.
"We will also continue to promote the product online and spotlight compatible 3rd party services and add-on products," Microsoft said in a statement. "The team is evaluating the strategy for the next version of the product and will continue to investigate the opportunity in the small business market."
Things are similar for MSN Direct, which offers traffic and other services to devices like in-car map systems.
"While the group was impacted by yesterday's job eliminations, they will continue to maintain the current MSN Direct service and invest in developing a low cost receiver for multiple devices," Microsoft said.
As for the .Net Micro Framework, Microsoft said it will make the project a community source effort.
"Microsoft will continue to support existing customers according to any agreements that we have in place with them, and will honor our lifecycle support pledge," Microsoft said. "Forums continue to be available at MSDN. After moving to the community model, new customers will be supported by the community."
The software maker said it will eliminate the royalties that had been associated with the product. As a result of the shift, Microsoft said the team was affected by job cuts and the remaining workers will shift to the broader .Net Framework team.
Microsoft also confirmed it made deep cuts at Massive, its in-game advertising unit. However, the company said a report Tuesday that three-quarters of staff were cut was an overstatement. Tuesday's cuts affected 28 percent of full-time staff. The cuts also apparently hit hard two Microsoft-produced magazines for developers, but I am still working on getting details on that front.
Also of note, of course, is the fact that after the January cuts it took some time for some of the product decisions to be clear. At the time, Microsoft said it would cut 5,000 jobs over an 18-month-period.
Meanwhile, Microsoft left the door open to further job cuts.
"As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure including additional job eliminations," Ballmer said in a memo to staff.
The company has also taken other actions including cutting spending on vendors, travel, and contractors, and even canceling its annual picnic.
Microsoft met a deadline this week to respond to European Commission charges that its inclusion of a browser in Windows violates antitrust laws there.
In January, the European authorities filed a new complaint with a preliminary finding that Microsoft had broken the law by bundling a browser into Windows.
Microsoft's response was not made public and the company did not offer a comment, but it's fair to say the company disagrees with the finding.
The stakes are high. In addition to potential fines, Microsoft has noted in regulatory filings that European authorities may seek to force Microsoft to include rival browsers with Windows as well as forcing the company to disable parts of Internet Explorer for users who select a different browser.
In other Microsoft news, the company has hired Cyrus Krohn as director of online services programming, a new position reporting to MSN executive producer Scott Moore. He will start on May 4, Microsoft said.
Most recently, Krohn served as director of the eCampaign division for the Republican National Committee and was at Yahoo from 2005 to 2007. Krohn also worked at Microsoft from 1996 to 2005 in various capacities, including as publisher of the online magazine Slate.
Meanwhile, as noted by CNET colleague Jessica Dolcourt, Microsoft has started talking about a new version of its Tellme program for Windows Mobile. Microsoft is counting on Tellme's voice technology to help make its upcoming release of Windows Mobile 6.5 a more compelling experience.
The software is available now for phone makers to start including in their devices and will be available this fall for consumers to download.
I don't think I can come close to beating Kara Swisher's headline at All Things Digital, "Is Wonderwall Gonna Be the One That Saves MSN?"
So I'll just cut to the chase: in a move that seems to be way, way, way out in left field, Microsoft's MSN division has partnered with media company BermanBraun to launch an entertainment news site called Wonderwall.
Geared toward a slightly more highbrow breed of entertainment fan than the Perez Hilton set, Wonderwall primarily aggregates content from other entertainment sites but has an editorial team spearheaded by pop-culture veteran Alex Blagg. (He's on Twitter, natch.)
The launch of Wonderwall comes right before Sunday's Grammy Awards ceremony. It also happens to be timed perfectly to fit two high-profile celebrity scandals, the Michael Phelps up-in-smoke fiasco and the Christian Bale audio freakout.
So--why? Well, big tech players seem to want to have an in-house celebrity news hub, for one reason or another. Time Warner's AOL has the hugely successful TMZ, Yahoo has OMG (and indeed, the interface looks a bit like OMG), and Google has...um...the "entertainment" section of Google News.
And despite this whole "advertising recession" thing, we've seen big tech companies increasingly investing in ad-supported content. Perhaps as blog networks find themselves strapped for cash and print media companies find themselves smacking into financial icebergs, the tech companies see a potential gap in the market.
AOL rolled up all its content properties into a conglomeration called MediaGlow recently. We can only wonder if MSN's Wonderwall is the start of something similar in Redmond.
