Microsoft: does NO-ONE in Redmond get Web 2.0?

The software giant announces a move into social networking, but struggles to play catch up let alone innovate.

Poor old Microsoft. They very nearly missed out on the Internet altogether. First they had to displace the Netscape browser by controversially -- and according to some courts, illegally -- giving away Internet Explorer with Windows to get a place at the table, even. Then they found no one ever went to their websites, prefering AOL and, latterly, Google before reinventing MSN to finally get some traffic... only to find people liked Facebook and MySpace more.

Now, finally, we see the software giant embracing Web 2.0 with an announcement this week that they're adding news feeds, a feature 120 million people have been enjoying on Facebook for over a year (and which, since, almost every other site has already added).

It could all have been so different. I first signed up for a Hotmail account around ten years ago, soon enough after launch to get ianhendry@hotmail.com as my address. I have a comprehensive address book defining who else I know on the Internet. I have used Live Messenger for many years and it remains my preferred IM solution to this day. I still have a lot invested in Microsoft, as do many others. So how are they doing such a poor job of exploiting that and innovating in the areas the web is firmly headed?

The announcements this week from Chris Jones, VP at Windows Live, amount to Microsoft doing little more than a bit of social networking aggregation; services that you can find a hundred of in the web already. Most people, I imagine, will just keep doing what they were doing at source, rather than make the effort to go to Live to find out what is happening elsewhere on internet where they already have an account and regularly visit already: "Come here so you can find out what we interrupted you doing over there" isn't very compelling. Microsoft's aim, of course, is that you spend more time on the Live properties so they can sell more advertisements. Yes, that's the advertising based revenue model which most other Web 2.0 companies are realising doesn't work. By any measurement, what Microsoft is doing is not innovating. It's barely catching up.

In March 2008 Microsoft acquired web authentication company Credentica. Within its portfolio it now has a great method for helping to log people in to websites using centrally held authentication details -- in essence, single sign on, one password for all the sites you could wish to visit. In its Live services, such as Messenger and Hotmail (and this could extend out to Outlook easily) it has details of your "social graph", people you know. Combine the two and Microsoft has the power to provide a central site with login details and a "friends" list which it could then enable users to make use of on other social networking sites. Those sites would provide the services they are today, but you wouldn't need a new identity or to build your friends list from scratch on every one you visit. It could be all that OpenId and OpenSocial have been promising for a year, but not delivering.

With Facebook on board (rememember Microsoft owns a small percentage), tehy could easily import friend information from that and help Facebook properly implement the long delayed Facebook Connect.

With this sort of power at its disposal, an announcement that it's adding a news feed to integrate with Hotmail is, frankly, a bit lame.

Is there no-one in Redmond who gets Web 2.0 and the position of dominance Microsoft could hold if it used properly the tools it already has?

Where do I apply for a job?

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz