MSN - Early adopters and "influencers"
Over the past few days there has been buzz throughout the blogosphere on Mark Lucovsky's post about Microsoft and our apparent lack of ability to ship software. While I could spend the rest of the year disputing his naive perspective, I figure it is best left up to people much smarter than me - namely Joshua, Omar, and Kevin. Great posts, all three of them.
The one thing that I find somewhat insulting (OK, mini-rant) is MarkL's lame attempt to compare Google to Windows Update - as if this is Microsoft's only web-based software... a service that keeps your OS up-to-date. Wow, instant loss of credibility. News flash: There are thousands of people who work in this place called MSN, shipping software through the web every single day of every single week. From blogging and MSN Search to MSNBC... from online videos & music to web-based email and instant messaging. Want to compare "Google's" software as a service model to something at Microsoft? Don't compare it to Windows, my man!
OK - with that off my chest... the real reason for this post.
Some of the "fallout" from the debate was interesting. In comment threads on Scoble's blog and elsewhere, people were saying some interesting things about MSN:
- "No one uses MSN." (huh?)
- "It isn't for us."
- "MSN on the whole is buggy, slow, and hard to use."
- "Oh yeah, I forgot about MSN."
- "MSN is playing catch-up to Google and Yahoo."
- "MSN isn't cool, I would never use it."
Now, obviously I take some of that to heart. So I wanted your opinion on how MSN can be better in the future at addressing the needs of early adopters, influencers, and "geeks". You folks. It is pretty obvious to those of us inside the MSN walls (yes, even us geeks) that we are shipping some very cool services for our customers. But for some reason, services like Gmail and Yahoo's Search APIs tend to get a lot more play amongst "sneezers" than things like Outlook Live! or MSN Video (which rock!) Dare recently posted about this as well as part of a post on another topic.
So, why are early adopters sleeping on MSN? Let me list a few possible reasons:
- Our logo is a butterfly. Colored butterflies just aren't cool.
- MSN isn't a 'fun word' like Yahoo, Google, or Friendster. It sounds too 1995.
- Our services sometimes seem dumbed down instead of "geeked up"... as if we are catering to the lowest common denominator.
- MSN's brand is tightly coupled with AOL - namely dial-up software and a walled garden approach instead of fast, fun Internet services.
- We don't have a clear developer story, and developers are early adopters.
- MSN is part of a rich company; one that a lot of people love to hate.
- MSN isn't viewed as an underdog (even though we are in many cases!)
- MSN wasn't started in a garage in Silicon Valley.
- MSN stands for breadth instead of depth.
Of course, I don't necessarily agree with all of the points above - the ones that aren't facts anyway. But that isn't the point... the point is to discover what we could do better to cater to early adopters short of changing our name to something silly sounding or killing the butterfly, neither of which I could get approved by upper management!
Is it better marketing of our services? Is it more MSN bloggers? Is it clear, articulated user scenarios? Is it the overall look & feel of our services? What about more personalization and developer APIs? Faster page load times across the board? What is it? How can we get early adopters (and the media for that matter) to speak of MSN in a positive light? Forget individual features - think bigger!
I have a few ideas myself, but I would like to hear what you have to say. If you have any thoughts, please email me at mtorres @ microsoft.com or leave some comments below.
What could MSN be doing to cater to you?