Will Live Kill? (continued)

Thanks to everyone who posted comments and linked to my Will Live Kill post.

It's always amazing how much you can learn by simply putting your thoughts out there and listening to what comes back.

In this case, the key point for me was that this is Live 1.0 (Windows 1.0 was lame too).

And that over time, Microsoft is going to invest in and improve this service.

So in trying to figure out if Live will kill, the key question is how long it will take Microsoft to make Live compelling?

Yesterday, they did something to make it compelling to Union Square Ventures.  Microsoft bought FolderShare, the folder sharing service that we use in our office to keep all of us synched up no matter where were are.

So now there's at least one thing that I will use at Live.com.  That's a good thing because it will keep me going there and watching how they build this out.

And that move in itself points out a big part of Microsoft's strategy. If they cannot build compelling services for live.com, they will buy them.

So maybe Live won't kill web 2.0.  Maybe it will line the pockets of some web 2.0 entrepreneurs.

hmm.

Comments

[charlie crystle]

Platform, platform, platform. Microsoft is better at platform and developer marketing than any company--ever--and will start to dominate within about 18 months. Not because they are "crushing" anyone, but because they understand developer marketing more than any company out there. Open source advocates with reactively say I'm wrong, MSFT crushes, can't innovate, etc, but 1) neither is true and 2) it's off point. MSFT wins because of platform and developer marketing.

Intuit QuickBooks--400 application vendors, limited SDK, no APIS

Microsoft Small Business Accounting--70,000 Windows ISVs, 5,000,000 VB developers, APIs for everything, and great developer tools and documentation.

Any Office competitor: nice stuff, no APIs.

Microsoft Office circa 1995--great APIs, tons of developer marketing, awesome third party solutions, easy interfaces to work with

Netscape 3.0--hard to develop for, bad documentation, lousy developer marketing, great hype marketing

Internet Explorer 3.0--easy APIs, ActiveX/COM, great developer marketing, amazing things you could make happen with rich-client approach to web apps. In fact, Microsoft but the "app" in web app. ActiveX is still around, by the way--Flash is an ActiveX control, as are a ton of others that we easily accept.

Result of all of these? Developers could build stuff easily, quickly, etc, and yeah, some stuff broke, and yeah, there are security issues, but Microsoft, better than anyone, understands developers. Not eveyone can be a Java or C programmer, so there's VB (they are making a mistake retiring VB 6.0).

Live might not be the bees knees today. But while we're talking about it (and we ARE talking about it--they win the buzz for the week), Microsoft is aggressively recruiting its vast network of MVP developers, educating them, turning them into evangelists, and getting cadres of other developers stoked with cool easy stuff they can add to their apps. By PDC next year, everyone will be wondering how Google is going to survive the onslaught of Microsoft's machine, which wins because of platform and developer markeeting.

BTW--Google doesn't get it. We integrated Google maps with our Rich-Client/Web services platform (that any VB developer can build apps with, btw), and they asked us to stop. It wook us 15 minutes to switch over to Microsoft Maps. We're welcome there.

[Daniel Nerezov]

nice comment! very insightful.

It's starting to seem like everyone's jotting down the pros and cons of whether MSFT will (or will not) win the Internet wars.

I'd rather side-step the speculation and note that chair throwing and other outwardly agressinve competitive behaviour is a good thing.

As long as GOOG, MSFT and YAHOO are fighting each other for the top spot, I don't care who wins, because which ever way it goes, it's the startups that ultimately benefit from all this commotion.

I say let them slog it out, do the M&As and I'm just gonna kick back, watch people leverage this situation and have fun doing it.

[JayR]

I've been thinking about this one for a couple of days, and I think I'm coming out the same way. Companies like MSFT, CA, etc., build the chassis and then buy the parts. It should be an interesting ride the next couple of years, as the major players compete to buy the Web 2.0 app du jour.

[Ian McAllister]

How long will it take to make Live compelling? 1 year, with real headway between now and then.

You'll see a real difference between allowing a developer ecosystem and embracing one. Take the Google API as an example. Developers are limited in how many queries they can execute and the data is out of date, especially link and indexed page counts. Seems like their API is Pri 3. Microsoft gets the idea that flipping apps inside out into services and embracing a third-party developer ecosystem has to be Pri 1.

[charlie crystle]

amen.