Microsoft goes social
I’ve been waiting til now to read carefully what Dare Obesanjo had to say about the development of the ’social networking’ features in Spaces.MSN.com. Many of the design decisions he and his team made - are exactly the issues I consult our clients on.
1. Dare was bascially forced to accept a mutual friend model - not allowing for someone to add someone “as a friend” without permission. I applaud this decision. But they did not touch the issue of ‘levels of granularity of relationships’ - which we’ve had in the PeopleAggregator for almost 3 years now.
2. Dare warns about automatically converting a Buddy List into a social network. Hmmm - we’re about to find out how that works with AIM. This notion of the Buddy list as social network tantalizes me - the results will be fascinating. Dare claims it will be a ‘privacy nightmare’. I don’t necessarily agree with him - but (as I said above) we’re about to find out if this is true - in spades.
3. Dare took an approach similar to AOL and Yahoo - where the social networking is not just a separate feature, but an underlying system construct - which will permeate throughout the ’suite’ of features in Microsoft Live. Coolio-icious. All I hope is that these 3 giants support an open approach and put wires into their system to enable their users to freely move their data and profile information to any other social networks. These wires are what we call the ‘PeopleAggregator APIs’ and we’re working on the code and docs - as we speak.
4. Microsoft has chosen to roll out these features to Australia - only - at first. That’s a fascinating decision - I wonder why Australia? But when you’re dealing with huge systems - it’s smart to start off slow. I think you’ll see that with AOL as well. But starting is 90% of the challenge! Once they get going - they won’t stop!
5. Dare talks about the challenge of the fact that many people are part of many networks. TELL ME ABOUT IT! But I disagree with his solution of using tags to differentiate folks between networks. That’s a cop out! We’ve implemented a ‘meta-network’ approach with the GoingOn Networks - and I think you’ll see this approach used elsewhere. Certainly this is what the PeopleAggregator is based upon. Scaling these networks and making them relevant and approrpriate is a HUGE design decision. I’ll be debating with Dare on this issue - in the next few hours.
But in general I applaud Dare and his team.
Right on dudes and dudesses. Keep going!
so, where is PeopleAggregator? There are many people willing to work on an open source PHP SNS, but there isnt really a good project to coalesce around now…
so, where is PeopleAggregator? There are many people willing to work on an open source PHP SNS, but there isnt really a good project to coalesce around now…
so, where is PeopleAggregator? There are many people willing to work on an open source PHP SNS, but there isnt really a good project to coalesce around now…
The reason for Australia.
1.2 Million active Australian MSN Spaces users.
http://www.pandorasquared.com/articles/2006/03/10/the-next-msn-windows-live
Phil Holden from Microsoft says “One of the obvious questions is why are we doing this only in Australia? Well at least it’s not only in the USA for a change! Basically when we were looking for a trial market we wanted to find somewhere that had an active Spaces customer base, a mature MSN market and somewhere where we thought we would get lots of feedback – good and bad. Although many markets probably fit that bill we ended up choosing Australia and I can say I’m not complaining right now! ”
http://spaces.msn.com/philiworld/blog/cns!FEF0EE8E8F4D8F9A!363.entry?_c11_blogpart_blogpart=blogview&_c=blogpart#permalink
The reason for Australia.
1.2 Million active Australian MSN Spaces users.
http://www.pandorasquared.com/articles/2006/03/10/the-next-msn-windows-live
Phil Holden from Microsoft says “One of the obvious questions is why are we doing this only in Australia? Well at least it’s not only in the USA for a change! Basically when we were looking for a trial market we wanted to find somewhere that had an active Spaces customer base, a mature MSN market and somewhere where we thought we would get lots of feedback – good and bad. Although many markets probably fit that bill we ended up choosing Australia and I can say I’m not complaining right now! ”
http://spaces.msn.com/philiworld/blog/cns!FEF0EE8E8F4D8F9A!363.entry?_c11_blogpart_blogpart=blogview&_c=blogpart#permalink
The reason for Australia.
1.2 Million active Australian MSN Spaces users.
http://www.pandorasquared.com/articles/2006/03/10/the-next-msn-windows-live
Phil Holden from Microsoft says “One of the obvious questions is why are we doing this only in Australia? Well at least it’s not only in the USA for a change! Basically when we were looking for a trial market we wanted to find somewhere that had an active Spaces customer base, a mature MSN market and somewhere where we thought we would get lots of feedback – good and bad. Although many markets probably fit that bill we ended up choosing Australia and I can say I’m not complaining right now! ”
http://spaces.msn.com/philiworld/blog/cns!FEF0EE8E8F4D8F9A!363.entry?_c11_blogpart_blogpart=blogview&_c=blogpart#permalink
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