Microsoft Can Do Something Right

29Mar07

Ever since Apple and Linux developers got their chops together and started putting out some great operating systems that in many ways put Windows to shame, Microsoft has been under pressure. One of the big qualms that people have had with Windows and Microsoft is security, but being the biggest player in the operating system market makes you the biggest target.
With this criticism ringing in their ears they have put out Windows Vista with an emphasis on security, alongside work on the user interface to try and keep up with the eye candy that OS X provides.

Another area that Microsoft is getting criticism in is their web presence. The transition to their new Live platform for search, email, blogs and other services seems to have been patchy at best. Not making headway in the search battle and with Windows Live Mail being a slow and clumsy attempt at web mail things have not gone smoothly.
Reading articles and blogs it would seem that few people are speaking up for Microsoft’s latest efforts and they have been labeled as a big clumsy giant of a company trying to move quickly to keep up with the smaller, more agile likes of Google, ebay and the rest. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. There are two areas where Microsoft is leading the pack and I believe will keep them at the forefront of technology for many years to come.

The first area is that of Research. Microsoft Research is part of the company that looks ahead to the future of technology. Read their about page here to get a better understanding of their role within the company.
After watching some video’s of TechFest 2007 (a showcase for MS Research’s work available here) and looking around their web site and other leading technology companies web sites I was blown away, both in terms of the work the department is producing and how much larger and important it is than what other companies are producing.
Many of the innovations on show at TechFest were simply mind blowing and there is nothing that I have seen out there that comes close to the stuff these guys are researching and making proof of concepts. Some of the projects include, Surface-Computing Innovations, HDView — An plugin for very high res sharing very high res images, Asirra: Securing Web Services with Cute Kittens and many many more. It’s difficult to describe some of these innovations and the linked articles and the videos do a much better job of describing it than I would. Rest assured they are all very very cool.

The other area which Microsoft has got really right is blogging and video blogs. Microsoft has over 4,000 employees blogging on a regular basis, which has got to be one of the highest number from a single company. They encourage their employees to blog and do not weigh them down with legal paperwork before they blog, they simply say “don’t be dumb”. They recognize their employees are smart people and give them credit to blog sensibly and responsibly. This has got to be applauded, especially when you look at other companies who blog and make the writers sign legal documents covering what they can and cannot say and other companies who’s “blog” is written by the PR department and carefully crafted to provide the right message.

Microsoft enables anyone who is interested to read the thoughts of the people who write the software, design the user interface etc, and you and me are able to leave these people comments on their blog and get into dialog with them. They cease to become these shadowy pasty faced geeks who have no real contact with the users. They are able to get instant communication with the users and vice versa. Being able to read explanations, thoughts, and the problems faced by the people who wrote the software that runs their phone or laptop is a fantastic tool for understanding why certain features were included or not and is a fantastic insight into their work. You can see their blog network here and here

The other area of video blogging is one they have tackled very very well. No other company that I have come across allow such access to the people who form the heart of the company. It was all started by Robert Scoble a technology evangelist at Microsoft who started Channel 9 to have conversations with his colleagues at Microsoft. The great thing about this approach was that no one at Microsoft looked over the video’s or edited them, it was him, talking to his friends and colleagues at Microsoft about their work and posting it up onto the internet. This gave a fantastic insight into the work that was going on at Microsoft and the people that worked there. He interviewed everyone from sofware developers, coders, right up to Bill Gates and Steve Balmer. Robert Scoble left Microsoft and now continues to produce videos for the PodTech Network for his show The Scoble Show.
The video’s were simply one man with a camera, no flashy lighting, editing or voice overs. This was the charm of them, they were raw conversations that you could very easily imagine happening without the camera being there, just Scoble talking to his friends and co-workers. If the videos had been fantastically produced, lit, edited and polished, they would loose their charm and believability which is what drew people to them in the first place.

Since his leaving, Channel 9 has expanded producing more videos, Channed 10 has also been launched which shows videos from inside as well as outside Microsoft and is a more entertainment focused site than the more “geeky” approach that Channel 9 has.

Other companies and institutions, large and small can learn a lot from Microsoft’s approach to blogging and video and it is an area that they are leading the field in.

Despite lagging behind in some web areas, being criticised over flaws in their operating system and dragged through the European Competition Courts, they are leading the field by a country mile in the two areas that I have focused on and look forward to the innovations they make in these areas in the future

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