Microsoft, for all its problems, is a great software company. Its core products, the Windows operating system and the Office productivity suite, still dominate their respective markets and, while they are continually facing more capable competition and hence have declining market share, Windows and Office remain strong product offerings.
Yet, it is clear that something is rotten in the State of Redmond. A reading of Microsoft’s Annual Report only strengthens this conviction. For those that do not want to read the entire thing Brier Dudley’s blog offers an excellent summation, focusing on the issues that keep Ballmer up at night.
However, it does not seem to be the competitive landscape which has changed the consumer orientation towards Microsoft. What has really thrown Microsoft off, is that other companies have shown those consumers both most willing to try new technologies and most willing to open their wallets for technology, the consumers of Generation-Y, that they do not need Microsoft. Companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google, have changed the way that young consumers consume, and therefore purchase, technology. And that is a very dangerous position for a software company to be in, especially one that is not known for being nimble on its feet.
Facebook is perhaps the clearest example of this. While Mark Zuckerberg and others, brand Facebook a Social Utility, for young people, who really only care about functionality, Facebook succeeds because it is the killer web application for communications and personal information management. Facebook Mail is not without its problems, but the combination of Facebook Mail, Facebook Chat, and what is functionally an auto updating address book, makes Facebook into the new Outlook not only for those who are inside of Silicon Valley, but for anyone of the millions of people who use Facebook as either their sole or their primary digital identity. LinkedIn, is even more explicit than FaceBook is, in trying to become a person’s primary stop for vital, in this case professional, communications, as it is functionally a digital Rolodex.
Another example of Microsoft’s inability to understand younger users, comes in what I can only call their software design philosophy, which I can summarize as “Throw in More Features”. Yet, that seems antithetical to those products which are selling most successfully in the market place, especially to young people. Microsoft Office is the clearest example of this. The myriad number of options buried in Word 2008’s ribbons, will rarely be used by most users. And in Excel 2008, some users might need pivot tables, but vast majority of those that use spreadsheets will never ever need to use them, nor will they ever write a macro, or script in Visual Basic. What is clear from the success of Google Docs and Zoho, especially amongst college age students, is that people want tools that are simultaneously powerful and simple to use. And that is why not only are web based office replacements, which focus on ease of use,facilitating collaborative exchange, and being able to publish in digital environments, but also iWork and Star office, are gaining traction.
So, what is the take away from all of this? For Microsoft to pick up the proverbial ball and start running with it, it will need to listen to what the consumer wants, and design products that fit those needs, rather than assuming that the consumer will buy whatever it is that Microsoft hands them, just because it is a Microsoft product. And, the young consumers of today, the big spenders of tomorrow, want products that are focused on mobility, ease of use, speed, and simplicity. Perhaps what is most frustrating is that it is clear that it is not the hardware that is keeping Microsoft from building an Apple killer. There are great products that run the Windows platform. But young consumers, I believe, do not want just great hardware, but want a great computing experience, given how they create, disseminate, and consume information. Until Microsoft starts listening to young people and creating products and services that simply work, and that means no crashes, no blue screens, and a dead simple user interface, it will not surprise me that a melancholy mood will hang over Microsoft, and its share price.
There a few things I can’t stand about Microsoft and one of them is the fact they try to be an “All in One” company. If they would just team up or partner with the company that focuses on just a particular area, then they would give themselves a better name.
Big companies fail because they’re too big
Well said brother, well said…
big companies may fail sometimes at making the “best” product, but they don’t fail and go out of business like many web 2.0 companies. when was the last time a microsoft or google or ibm or GE failed? enron is the closest example, and it’s not particularly similar and they didn’t fail because they were too big.
unlike most web 2.0 companies, microsoft employs tens of thousands of people and diversifying (”becoming too big”) is the best way for them to avoid losing tons of money and laying people off, otherwise they could make a single blunder or misstep and suddenly seattle becomes the new detroit. they can afford to lag behind the tech curve a little bit in their existing products, but they can’t afford to miscalculate a huge product transition and lose their entire revenue stream.
that said, i’m “generation y” or younger, and i don’t know anyone who has replaced outlook or a similar program with facebook for work, and i don’t know anyone who uses outlook for most of their personal communication. they’re different things.
tell that too big oil. multi millionaires and billionaires never fail (same, house, samecar, same life). they win when the economy is good or bad. failure is something they have been using to there advantage for years. stock going up or down someone is getting paid.
There is something called “mediocre mentality” who hate leaders, they want everyone to be mediocre. Just like there are haters for Schumacher, there are microsoft haters just because their success is little glaring to them.
Blue screens? i dont remember seen it since long. Viruses? of course they dont write virusus for 0.3% of linuxes out there. As for OS, microsoft has kept us ahead of time, very intuitive and clean, hats off to them. If google continues hating microsoft to same like they showed in response blog against MS-Yahoo deal, it already reflected in their share price, and now google is smaller than apple in market capitalization. Mind u gen-y uses more bandwidth to download pirated videos/movies than to anything else, all of which will take time to fall in line with law. I donno this TC blogger, he really needs to get a life.
inspiring rant Andrew!
Redmond needs a focus. what is the name of there main search website.
is it microsoft.com,
or msnbc.com
or live.com
or is it livesearch.com
or is it powerset.com.
or is it msn.com
Yes redmond has major Location issues. no wonder there search is falling apart.
How about a My+Location style domain channel that puts everything on the planet in a custom strategic pin point common sense location.
Hint: its called “Natural Language Location.”
my guess is they will continue to buy what they dont have. nothing wrong with that. hopefully they have some good eagle eye scouts in the scouting the field.
Seriously? It’s not that complicated.
It’s Live Search.
The main page is http://www.live.com.
The alternate way is msn.com.
Yahoo does this also.
search.yahoo.com takes you to your standard Google clone.
Yahoo.com takes you to a MSN-like portal.
Their “search” isn’t falling apart because of brand recognition, it’s because Google has a near monopoly on search by default. That’s why they wanted to buy Yahoo - because while their search market share would never go down a ton it wouldn’t dramatically go up otherwise either. It’d be stagnate.
Andrew and Olivia respond!
Somebody put Andrew out of his misery.
“We, in the startup community, will take over”
“The big companies will fail”
“We will get rich”
“I will only care about my yacht”
You are exactly what’s wrong with the web. You dilute the message as you co-opt it to serve yourself. As a result, those of us that are creating businesses of value with a sincere interest in changing things for the better and making people’s lives simpler without trying to suck their bank accounts dry have to try even harder to earn the trust of people.
You haven’t heard of GE, McDonalds, Disney, Haliburton, etc.?
Get off my internets!
I didnt know they had more than msn; I just know i kill the browser quickly whenever i get sent to an msn search site, esp after using hotmail (free pop mail! Pleeeaaase!!!). The UI looks like they just dont care.
Microsoft is like an ex-girlfriend who I am slowly but surely disentangling from my life. Nothing new in, slowly killing off what I can.
Very well put. I hadn’t thought about Facebook in those terms, but you’re right.
think the headline spells “redmond” wrong.
Facebook is the new Outlook? I think you’re overrating how many people use (and pay for) Outlook outside the enterprise. LinkedIn is a better argument, but it’s difficult to see either of these products evolving into Outlook replacements in the enterpise.
Microsoft Power BUSINESS, which pay the bills, a bunch of kids twittering about who they are dating tonight means nothing and pays no bills and makes nothing in business.
All this talk of Facebook being a new business model? is crazy at best. (aka stupid)
If microsoft should be more like Facebook, shouldn’t GE and GM do the same?
It defies logic, More Blogola for Payola.
Mikey will probably delete this post as well, since someone at techycrunchy has done before.
But doesnt it say something that people avoid msft when they can, but use it when their job makes them? I hate Outlook with a passion *because* I used it so much.
Exactly! Thank you.
This is a very absurd article. I’m a consumer who has a facebook account and I can’t even imagine using it in replacement to my outlook, what’s more on the enterprise?
Microsoft is slow to change and does not quickly respond to change. Facebook cannot replace Outlook but Facebook has the ability to update itself. Outlook contacts get outdated quickly and one would have to go in and update it. Facebook users update their contact info when they change it. I personally do not like Mark Z or Facebook, but would prefer Web/Local software. Every try to do collaboration using Word, Groove, or OneNote. Every try to network with Microsoft products? It is a disappointment. I have always put my faith into Microsoft but they have let me down many times over.
@chris: I agree with your basic point. MS’s real problem is that it views nearly every company/technology as a threat and thus enters way too many battles - even ones it is not truly committed to winning (i.e., Zune). That is a failure of leadership, and Ballmer’s fault.
I have an idea for Microsoft. Why not they release something named ‘Office Lite’ with limited number of , but most usable features, on a very competitive cost
it’s called windows live. it’s free.
they also have live spaces, which is close to facebook featurewise
MS Office Home and Student is just $150.
Why buy MS Office for $150 when using Open Office is free!
By the way I like the way suns OO integrates all components of their suit
and make it easy accessable in each one of their programms. e.g. using
Math in Writer. In OO 3 it should be possible to change existing pdfs.
Dear Ballmer,
The best thing you could do is buy the rest of Facebook. However, as a Facebook user, I hope you don’t do that until you learn to become more agile and open. Furthermore, as a web developer, I beg you to abandon IE…
Best of Luck,
Ben
As a user of both Windows and Mac OS X, I don’t think that XP crashes any more than the Mac OS. The days of Win98 are long gone.
The main difference is the agility and gracefulness of the software itself. iTunes doesn’t do anything Media player can not do; it is just much easier to use and faster - and generally written much better both from UI perspective and programing. It is enough to use the search function to see that the difference is also under the hood.
As a former Windows user since 95, I’d say you very wrong. I’ve been using a Mac for two years now and never once has it crashed or even “Not Respond” because I’m doing too much at once unlike Vista or XP. I use Vista for gaming and ONLY for gaming!
are all mac users as stupid as chris ledet or is he just a special case?
@ chris ledet
are you a former windows user, since 95, or have you been using windows since 95? you seem to be contridicting yourself in a single sentence. which is it?
and i don’t think it’s fair for you to call someone else’s experience wrong. if that person says they see osx and xp crash the same number of times i’m sure THEY do. and unless you have m.p.d and are posting as two separate people you don’t really know.
@Chris
I think you are wrong and miki is very right..
It is not that mac osx is so much more stable than vista or xp (although we tease winboy a lot with this)
It is the endless discovery of tiny new,smart and easy little features in the OS that will improve your productivity.
That and the surprisingly high quality 3d party apps (which is a big problem for windows) makes the occasionally crash a whole lot bearable.
@chicken, why am I stupid? Because of my grammar or my opinion?
@jason, I started using Windows since the 95. Sorry if I’m grammatically incorrect. I apologize for comparing one’s experience to my own. I just find myself going crazy and impatience with Windows because I seem to much at a time. I have top notch hardware but still find Windows to be so0o slow and bloated! (yes, I disabled most of the services)
@CasaMan, I do find Mac OS X A LOT more stable than Windows! I don’t get “Not Responding” messages or find myself opening the Task Manager to close an application! Mac OS X just works!
All the replies towards say that I’m wrong, however I’m stating my opinion just like miki was and still gets blasted?!?! Interesting…
@Chris
Not wanted to blast you but there is a difference between opinion and reality. Osx is very stable, true. But windows (for most people) has become as stable.
One word that makes Facebook irrelevant: websense…
Agree mostly about MSFT, not sure about LinkedIn. LinkedIn was online before facebook but has lost speed in the innovation game. Facebook, while not without faults, was the first to have an application platform, a news feed, etc. I really think LinkedIn won’t be worth much in the future as Facebook further dominate.
Disclaimer: I am very displeased with the new Facebook design.
@chris and @lever:
I’m no lover of Microsoft, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the “all-in-one” finger could just as easily be pointed at Google.
agreed - and google’s stock ain’t exactly setting the world on fire. maybe the author has a diagnosis for google as well?
Not as much as Microsoft though. Google creates products to innovate and made their users’ lives a lot simpler on the web. Since when do they charge for products they users don’t make money off of? For example, I do not have MS Word on my Mac, so if I was sent a Word Document in an email, I could open it with Google Docs.
Google makes its money off users by spying on all their web activity and then selling that info to advertisers.
Don’t drink the Kool-aid.
Example of gaggle innovation to make our lives easier. 10 years in the making.
new - suggestion tool.
keyword - TechCrunch.
answer: 7 million results.
Bottomline: Only needed one.
Sound like gaggle is one of the greatest information spammers on the planet? They are. Gaggle is not your friend.
Please, please, please, lay, off, the, commas, dude.
@Patel, you are right. I think in the long run LinkedIn will be out of market. Why would you need that. One thing I admire about Facebook is the maturity of its core people. Although Zuckerberg is very young but he is many times mature than the Cuil developers. That’s the point of Facebook’s success. And now it will only go ahead. About the new design, I think it’s fine. Its more interactive than the previous version. Also the Facebook ads are getting fine now-a-days.
i’ve been a facebook user for more than 4 years. throughout most of my college experience, the ads were fantastic. it was the only site on the web where i actually clicked ads.
now all i get are shady dealings such as ‘21 and single? click here for sex’ or ‘hot new car insurance rates.’ as facebook has gone mainstream, it’s lost its ability to display ads that interest me. if it plans to be a ad display company, this is bad news. if not, lose the ads. they universally suck.
lol were you smoking when you wrote this?
i dont think microsoft give a rat ass about facebook
a few superpoke apps by facebook willnt dent microsoft wallet
google is the company that is doing innovation that catches microsoft eye
Facebook is not ready to flood the corporate world simply because consumer and professional sectors do not cross over that well. How many people use Outlook as their personal email clients? Now, how many of you would trust Facebook with their work information?
Saying that Facebook is the next Outlook is a bit of a no-go, instead Facebook is LIKE Outlook instead.
I did a writeup with my thoughts on the issue recently:
http://virtualwayfarer.com/exp.....nd-e-mail/
As a Millennial i realized that we use e-mail very differently than other generations and that the extent of that difference, and the factors that have resulted in it are largely overlooked.
If anyone wants to discuss it further, I’m always eager to explore the concept.
I’m a thirtysomething and facebook has become the messaging platform of choice for my friends and myself. Email (Outlook) is only something that gets used for people outside of my “friends”.
Who cares about superwalls and pokes etc. Its an environment where people can keep in touch and share their lives and photos. And its in real time. Outlook can’t do that.
Windows Live Spaces can. And how is Facebook radically different than Myspace, the tech world’s baby back in ‘04/’05???
In a couple years there’ll be a new Facebook out there or, at the very east, interest in this one will wane considerably.
While I’m not a huge fan of Microsoft’s competitive strategies in their core business markets, I think that we should give them some credit for what they’re doing for developers behind the scenes. MySpace.com just recently took on a coldfusion to .net conversion and many sites out there are based on the popular microsoft framework–even more use their database solution to contain the back-end for their sites and technology deployments. While I don’t think that they’re explicitly trying to foster an environment of innovation on their products, they’ve built and maintained a developer toolset that’s robust, easy to use and very extendable. Office and Windows are two realities of the corporate world, but I don’t think that they’ll be hurting any time soon.
Do you have any information why Facebook converted from ColdFusion to .NET?
Myspace converted from CF to .net–I’ve had experience in both so I’d imagine it’s the terrible data handling with the CF container on top of JDK. It’s a really slow engine for a high-load site.
For a TC post I think this was very weak. You stated the obvious. How about a little insight?
@fd athow
The consumer and professional sectors are crossing over more than you think these days. As people are working more and more i the personal time, the merge between the two is going to continue to speed up. Look at the iPhone. People are buying it because they want it first as a consumer device, but hey look it also syncs to corporate mail (iPhone v2). As IT departments in corporate America start to get their heads out of their ass and realize they exist to make their employees work more efficiently, adopting newer technologies may allow employees to work more efficiently the sectors will continue to grow even closer.
smart phones have been around for a while now and they sync to corporate mail and still the adoption rate hasn’t been that high. so the argument of the general public wanting to connect to their work email is a little farfetched.
outside of the tech and apple fan-boy crowd i think the real reason for increased iphone market share is the cheaper price (with the 3g version).
i just don’t see my company suddenly giving everyone iphones and saying, “here, stay in touch with work email through this.” hell, most companies won’t give their general staff laptops. and forget about entrusting corporate email communication to facebook. facebook has its place in personal communication but i don’t see outlook, or the ms office suite for that matter, going anywhere for a long time.
and as for generation y, they may be using facebook primarily now but that’s because they are kids who don’t have meaningful jobs (for the most part). wait until they get out of college and join the corporate world and you’ll see their adoption rate of outlook go up.
Microsoft should buy Facebook and make Mark Zuckerberg the new, next-generation face of Microsoft.
Hahahahahah!! May be you are right
Facebook is the new Outlook? Have you even used Outlook? How much revenue do you think Microsoft generates from consumer use of Outlook/Office? And how much business gets done each day because of Facebook? If you’re going to make a point you could at least mention the Microsoft Live services. Even if Microsoft lost all of it’s consumer revenue from Office, it would still be a very wealthy and powerful company. This article sounds like it was written by a narrow minded 19-year old, chewing gum and jamming on his iPod.
Bullshit.
Apple, Google and Facebook all target consumers. Microsoft makes the vast majority of it’s money off of business customers.
Do you think that it is only a matter of time before consumers what the same kind of interface within their work environment?
this is kind of a dumb statement. consumers aren’t going to want the same kind of interface because it’s not their software at work; it’s the company’s. i can’t imagine someone going to their i.t. department complaining they want to use facebook for all their work emails instead of outlooks.
you need to put a little more thought into this.
while you make a great point about facebook being the sole form of online identity for most, your other points are either painfully obvious or relatively glib. MS needs to listen to “young people”? Come on. This is a focus group obsessed company that is full to smart dynamic people. They just happen to be stodgy as a whole. Plus they are a 90k person company with entrenched business lines that monetize like your wildest dreams. Listening ain’t their biggest problem.
Now - most of what I have brought out is also somewhat obvious, which brings me to the original issue: what is the point of this post exactly?
I would say the point is to encourage a discussion. Which you have taken part in.
Typical stupid Microsoft. They have lost their marginal capacity for creating new products, and must now march stoically towards their slow, inevitable death. This article is brilliant because it points out what is clear to everyone but Microsoft—people want fast, mobile devices and applications, not MS bloat. Sure, people used to care about computers and software that provided features appealing to power users. But tomorrow’s computer users want slick, simple products that can be carried in their pocket, or accessed via a thin client. Adobe, Google and Apple are the future. Microsoft is the stinky fish of the past. People will either pay for quality (IPhone), or get what they want for free (Google Docs). You would have to stick flaming bamboo splinters in my eye before I would use any new Microsoft products.
i use to feel the same way as you. users think they want simple applications to handle a specific task, but as their business grows and processes become more complex, so do the applications. microsoft understands the needs of a real, money making business. although i like apple and google, they have a long way to go to catch up with microsoft.
@jasons: and people also prefer intelligent comments over flimsy, knee-jerk bile from obvious haters.
Exactly - Microsoft is a huge business and so understands the challenges of running such a business as well as the software requirements of such a business. So just because you don’t need some of the features in Excel for your piddly spreadsheet tracking your budget or whatever doesn’t mean a big corporation doesn’t require that functionality. And the big company will shell out the big bucks for software that meets these needs but the average consumer probably won’t. Microsoft knows their target market perfectly and many commenters bashing MS fail to realize that.
I own a Mac and a PC. The Mac is a slick computer for personal use but would be utterly useless to me for work were it not for Office for Mac.
Of every MS related news, I look for your comment, you know why? You make me puke. You are sick…
I don’t think you have a point speaking specifically about a Microsoft crisis. Very few has found a good ROI replacing Office (expensive) with OpenOffice (free), and it’s not because OpenOffice is a bad alternative. Office is part of an ecosystem, where a company can develop Office plugins in a very short time and integrate it with ERPs like SAP, and I am not talking about toy spreadsheets for sharing simple things, I am talking about solutions like http://www.gigaspaces.com/excel
Beyond generation Y game, when you need to be serious about business you have few alternatives to trust, and although Linux can be a much better option, tools like Visual Studio can’t be compared yet with Eclipse, XCode, etc. So in the end you can be really fast developing applications under Windows with below the average developers (not talking about quality here).
I think if you want to write a serious article, you might better compare Google, Apple, Microsoft et al, side by side under its strengths and weaknesses and from different perspectives: end user, developer, business owners, etc. Microsoft is not a real innovator but in the business game seems to have patience and room for mistakes. Google is on its 10 years old, Microsoft has 33, and IBM 97.
Remember: Twitter is not the reality
omg, this was a really bad article.
Dan, your post is flawed in two main aspects. I’m taking the time to comment because you’re insulting me and 1,000,000 other readers by posting this half-baked article. It’s a shame that as TechCrunch grows the quality of writing deteriorates.
First, Facebook’s is not competing with Outlook. It’s competing with Windows Live, Yahoo Mail/Contacts, MySpace or Gmail as an online repository for one’s online social and personal life. Would FB become the Identity 2.0 hub? Maybe. Does it replace Outlook. Not at all. Outlook is primarily about Exchange, connectivity to Active Directory, VOIP and about 20,000 years of innovation which no company is even close to. Who’s MS Exchange’s and Outlook’s competitors now? Probably Notes, Cisco, SAP. MS Outlook is not a consumer products. Do consumers use it? Of course. Is it marketed or built for end-users? Of course not. Your article might as well have spoken about the thread FB poses to Gmail.
Second, you’re arguing that “something is rotten in Redmond”. It’s funny considering Microsoft is growing each quarter in almost a Google. Each quarter this company sells more than almost entire silicon valley. The problem in Microsoft is not of lack of good products as much as bad marketing and PR to promote great products. A few examples? Here you go. Live Mesh is probably one of the biggest things to happen to the world of software. It will be the heart of Web 3.0 and probably what will end up hooking billions of users to MS products for at least another decade. Photosynth, Deep Zoom, are other online examples. Microsoft and Apple are the only companies in the history of software that were able to repeatedly get into new businesses and conquer or reinvent them. Apple did so with the iPod and the iPhone. Microsoft, first with their OS, then with Office (crushing WordPerfect/Lotus), then with Server (from 0% market share to 90%), then with DB (SQL Server from 2% to 50-70% vs Oracle), then with Gaming (Xbox 360 beating PS3). Microsoft didn’t figure out Online and Mobile yet but considering the billions they’re pouring into it, there’s no reason they won’t be able to do there just what they’ve done in Server, DB and Gaming.
Please do me a favour and don’t post such nonsense articles again on a weekend. You’re really upsetting me and a million other readers.
….then browsers, with IE ?
Dan, have you thought of covering politics instead of technology?
There’s more room for sensationalism there.
Also, is Chrome going to replace OS X and Windows?
Of course Google will replace Windows!!!
Didn’t you see Issue #2 in Google’s new comic series?
OMG they’re soooooooooo innovative! Tabs w/ separate processes!!!!
Bottomline:
Facebook = toy
Outlook = tool
“Companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google, have changed the way that young consumers consume, and therefore purchase, technology.”
So in 1995 when people were lining up at midnight to buy Windows95, that didn’t change the way we used technology? It was the most useful OS to date. XP, Vista and OSX all borrow heavily from Windows95. Apple and Google aren’t exactly innovating… they are just improving a 13 year old product.
Microsoft’s XBOX360 is a failure? It may not be churning out the profits, but it is right up there on gaming platforms and the XBOX Live service actually works great!
Lol, I love it how you overate FB all the time.
Seriously thus, there are always going to be some people who use FB alot and update everytime they take a piss or fart but the majority of people are not using facebook heavily. I do visit facebook but just to check on what new people have added me.
There is no way in a company environment or even communicating with people of all ages that FB is going to take over. Outlook is nothing just as FB is nothing. If outlook was killed today email would still live and the world would continue. If FB died today it upset people but communication will still go on. Just as FB is for the younger crowd at the moment , so is Twitter for the geeky crowd at the moment, Both their times will pass. Dont over exagerate on FB, MS or GOOG postings so much.
Facebook is a new Outlook? Yeah, right… Outlook users are so missing those useful “poke” applications…
Facebook vs Outlook? Maybe next time will be Gmail vs Thunderbird. Im looking into it.
What a moronic post. So basically what you’re saying is that because Microsoft’s have something more than a single “CLICK THIS!” button it will scare off younger computer users? Sorry, that’s retarded. The second people need MORE than a Bold, Italic, Underline function they will seek out whatever is industry standard…and in the field of Word Processing or Email Account Software, that’s Word & Outlook, respectively.
Instead of sayinmg why MS isn’t doing as well as YOU think why not shed some light as to WHY people aren’t using Google Docs as an Office replacement or Facebook Mail as an email replacement? The reason why? Because TC is full of anti-Microsoft and you purposely write articles like this to get people to come to your site and appear “hip”.
Just so you know, you guys have no idea what you are talking about.
This article is hilarious, at best.
Facebook the new Outlook? Do you guys only analyze the American teeny-bopper market? Facebook’s business model is no where near as solid as Microsoft’s - as is the trust and respect of the product within the enterprise sector.
Not to mention the fact that Facebook and Outlook (as pointed out by TCCritic) are not even competing products, they’re on a completely different level and target a completely different audience.
As for the comment on features - common now, you can do better than that. I know heaps of users within the enterprise I work in that love these features, and use them to their maximum extent to quickly and easily present dynamic reports in Excel to professional statements in Word. Google Docs has nothing on that, and won’t have a solution for a long time.
“Facebook succeeds because it is the killer web application for communications and personal information management.”
I think this needs to be highlighted. Most people miss this point.
A few quick questions:
1. How much money is Facebook bleeding?
2. How much money are YouTube, GoogleDocs etc. bleeding?
3. Is MS’s profit increasing year-on-year?
The asseverations that MS is on the decline are overstated to say the least. MS does have work to do, but so do Apple, Google et. al. Look at the cock-ups that are MobileMe, iPhone problems, Chrome’s security vulnerabilities etc. I suspect there is a lot of biased reporting going on and a lot of MS hating.
i don’t understand how TC recruits such useless editors. sensationalism at its core.
Sensationalism indeed. There is no way in hell that i would use facebook instead of email. That is like saying “IM programs will replace email” 7 years back.
The functionality that facebook provides as opposed to outlook/gmail is coooommmppllleeetteeelllyyyyyyy different!!!!
Not to mention totally unprofessional.
Imagine telling a potential employer:
“Well, I don’t have an e-mail address to send you my resume…but if you add me as your friend on facebook you can see my profile or I can send a message to your facebook account.”
This wins the best comment award, LOL. Dan Kimerling is clueless.