— From Dave Winers Blog. Funny stuff, unless you’re Microsoft.
A few weeks ago I participated in a confidential briefing with about 30 other bloggers, we were shown a bunch of new software and services from Microsoft, most important — the new search engine that was rolled out last night.
Was there any reason at all for us to come to the briefing? There’s no difference between what we said to you four weeks ago and what the public is saying about the product now. We didn’t need to come from all over the world to give you our view of what you were doing, because you didn’t use any of the ideas and feedback we provided. It might make sense if we had just suggested minor tweaks, but that’s not what happened, and now everyone else is saying exactly the same things we said. What a waste of all our time. What a case study in organizational incompetence.
I think someone at Microsoft (actually MSN) reckoned that by inviting a bunch of naive bloggers to a meeting (free flights? free food? free lodging? we are never told, but I assume so) they could get a buzz going for the new MSN search engine. This was assuming that the bloggers could be wowed by having their collective asses kissed. The problem is that one uber-blogger in the room was Dave Winer who is no push-over for such tactics since he’s actually been around the block a few times.
More importantly MSN must have actually asked for suggestions and got them. This is always a mistake especially if you really had no intention of implementing any suggestions and just asked for the suggestions to make bloggers feel important. Did MSN folks think the bloggers wouldn’t notice? This sort of post is the result — a slam. Now all the other bloggers must follow suit turning the promotional concept into a fiasco — a disaster.
Personally I have never figured out why the MSN division of Microsoft has never gotten its act together. This is typical. Microsoft should have folded it years ago and kept smart projects such as Sidewalk and Expedia.
Then there is this link found on the MSN image search results page. Microsoft is asking people to report copyright violations (or to give them kudos for good images). Since 99-percent of the images on the net are probably copyrighted what’s the point? And who is violating? Microsoft? I just don’t get this at all.
As an exercise fill out the form found on the suggestion page linked above and see what feedback you get.
Winer link spotted by C. Coulter
Related link:
Search engine review finds “real” ideas buried
I understand that the new search engine is “tuned” for Internet Explorer, and “may not work well” with other programs. Since I use IE as little as possible–I use Opera and, increasingly, Mozilla Firefox, that does it for me….forget it….
Yes, they did pay the travel expenses of the bloggers, and also gave them free coupons to spend at the already-discounted Microsoft Store. I would have turned down the expense coverage if I wasn’t local (I live in Seattle now) and I did turn down the visit to the company store.
My proxy server blocks service.bfast.com, so I can’t see your links to ziff davis.
I wish you could change your links to bypass service.bfast.com. I block a lot of ad servers, and don’t want to unblock any of them.