RSSMS Taps Bloggers to Promote Longhorn
By Nate Mook | Published May 2, 2005, 11:58 AM
With Longhorn Beta 1 slated for June 30, Microsoft is restarting efforts to promote its next generation Windows release with a group of dedicated volunteers. Dubbed "Team 99," the evangelism effort will be composed of bloggers that will become Microsoft's voice to the masses and endeavor to bring the hype back to Redmond.
Team 99 was originally kept a secret, but with its rebirth Microsoft has decided to open the door for community nominations. Initially, about 20 individuals will be selected for the team ranging from developers to power users. The goal is to involve trusted, visible members of Microsoft's blogger community.
In a Web log posting first reported on by Microsoft Watch that announced the Team 99 restart, Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble explained the team's history.
"Longhorn got its name from the bar that's between Whistler and Blackcomb up in British Columbia. 99 is the road you drive from my house to get up to the Longhorn bar. So, Team 99 is the team that'll take us to Longhorn's launch," he said.
Scoble also provided some details, but admitted Microsoft was in the early stages of planning Team 99 and no formal process was established. "All will need to sign NDAs cause there are things in Longhorn that we don't want to leak out, but they'll be your proxies. They'll tell us where we're screwing up, what we're doing well, and will be world's top authorities on Longhorn."
"All members must be bloggers," Scoble added.
The creation of Team 99 follows a black eye Microsoft took last week during its yearly WinHEC conference in Seattle. The company invited top bloggers and Windows enthusiasts to get the first peek at Longhorn in over a year, but the release was largely met with criticism and disappointment.
Furthering the frustration among attendees, Microsoft ordered all screenshots of the Longhorn build taken down, citing a clause in the beta licensing agreement. "Microsoft has handled this situation extremely poorly, and it's not appreciated," enthusiast Paul Thurrott wrote in his Web log. "Way to throttle back the enthusiasm even further, guys."
But Jupiter Research senior analyst and Microsoft Monitor author Joe Wilcox questioned whether Team 99 is the right approach to heal the rift between Microsoft and its loyal fans.
"Microsoft is right to court enthusiasts, but I don't believe that a structured Team 99 is the right approach," said Wilcox. "At one time enthusiasts were the greatest Windows evangelists, and Microsoft courted them with user group programs and free software. Those efforts have all but disappeared and the free software incentives along with them."
"Blogs could be a highly effective way of evangelizing Longhorn, but I wouldn't recommend creating an orchestrated team of outsiders, presumably bloggers, as evangelists," added Wilcox. "The best evangelism will occur naturally, from people truly excited about the software."
.....one day they're p!ssing off people like Thurrott & Bink and then a few days later they want these guys to promote Longhorn. :?
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|Thurrott and Bink we're jumpy to begin with. Any repect I had left for Thurrott vanished when he started whining about an Alpha OSes GUI interface, apparently expecting a finished, polished product....alpha or not.
Anyone who expects anything more than what they got with 5038 is dellusional...completely disregarding, for the moment, that it should never have surfaced among bloggers, journalists or enthusiasts anyway (way to bork that one, MS)
I think MS needs this badly. There are far too many people who think longhorn is being stripped away to a service pack. All we've lost is WinFS, and that only for a short time. There will be plenty of other goodies with longhorn, MS needs to start focusing peoples attention on that.
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|Well you have a point about the gui, but you'd think someone somewhere within Microsoft could've come up with something better - especially as it was a presentation.
I think Longhorn is a white elephant wearing the emperor's new clothes. WinFS is not going to be included and is waaay waaaaay off. Basically Longhorn is to XP, what Me was to 98se - and that's a really good analogy. It's all about the $s and £s and it's basically a big con.
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|That's where MS borked it. It should not have been presented to bloggers and journalists. It is a release intended solely for hardware developers. Iviting the 'Net chaff was inviting criticism where it wasn't justified. They asked for it, they got it, hopefully they'll learn, but I doubt it.
You analogy is way off, btw. No offense, but ME was originally supposed to be what XP was. But the development time was too long for the marketing department to accept ans what we got was a slapshod, untested, peice of crap. ME should never have seen the light of day.
Why is everyone acting like WinFS is the be-all/end-all of longhorn and complaining that longhorn will be crap now because it's losing WinFS (albeit only for a short time)?
If WinFS were the ONLY feature longhorn had to brag about, yeah, I'd be pissed. And considering the flamage MS got due to the alpha's UI, I'd expect people to be more concerned about Avalon than WinFS anyway.
Trust me, there's far more to longhorn than WinFS. It's a good thing they are choosing to hold off on it's release until after longhorn. I'd rather have an awesome OS with an old FS, than a new FS they'll spend 2 SP's fixing it's bugs.
(Are you as amused by the Firefox crap below as I am?)
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|I can't remember what build of LH I last installed, but it was about a year ago I must admit. As far as I could see LH had a sidebar (software developers have nicked the idea for XP), but it 'seemed' to have very little else. Had MS spent more time develeping XP, it seems as though LH is what MS would have come up with. My analogy was meant to refer to the fact that LH just 'seems' a fancy version of XP.
WinFS was touted as being the big selling point of LH. Given that's fallen by the wayside, I can't quite see what the point is of LH apart from cosmetic changes - allbeit major cosmetic changes. Yes we'll get a new version of IE (IE7), but we're going to get that for XP now anyway. And yes we'll probably get a new version of WMP, but again I'm sure we'll get that for XP anyway. I'm sure there are things about LH that are more improved than XP, but that's my point - it'll just be a more refined version of XP.
Given that there's been two SPs for XP, I don't see any reason why MS can't hold back LH until WinFS is ready - other than financial.
The FF lovin below is silly with regards to this story, especially seeing as there was a FF story posted.
EDIT:
I see that the sidebar has been junked now and they plan on including RSS etc. A bit late on to be making such changes maybe, but let's hope not and let's hope the sidebar resurfaces in some form.
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|I think you're minimizing the impact Avalon will have on the OS, not just the GUI, but I do see your point. I do not know if Avalon alone, or the other, less hyped additions, will be enough of an incentive for most folks/companies to spend the upgrade $$$.
But then again, that's probably not a big deal to MS. They'll still have it installed on almost all new/OEM systems. The fact the company I work for never had 98/98SE/ME installed on a single system didn't seem to hurt MS...not upgrading our systems to Longhorn probably won't either.
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|True true. Possibly Avalon and Indigo will be loved, but I would've been more interested in winFS I have to say. Still, such is life.
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|I think secretively everyone is wondering about this "TOP SECRET" new windows coming next year (maybe:-)
(Yes i do have a PC with XP)
Mac users kinda scared that the sleek and shiny interface that once was theirs alone will be copied over by microsoft like many other features
available for mac alone at the moment.
(Yes i do own a mac)
Linux (and alike) users affraid windows might finnaly become stable (lol)
(Yes i do run Fedora)
As far as this whole team 99 thing...
Jut like nature... let the strongest "blogger" survive and that might not be a blogger from the "team 99" team.
Blogging is a form of "freedom of speech"...
you can't really control the freedom of speech by sticking it in a team... (or can you :-)
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|[Wilcox]: "The best evangelism will occur naturally, from people truly excited about the software."
The problem with hype is that it turns a blind eye to problems, much like the 'spreadfirefox" folks ignore every new security hole or the Apple folks and how slow Tiger is. Promotion through information is fine, but only as long as its derived from actual features, not wishful thinking.
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|What do you mean the spreadfirefox team ignores some security holes? What are these security holes and exactly how are they ignored? Are they forgotten because they have been patched? Do they still pose a threat? I use Firefox and i'll drop it right now if they don't give a crap about security.
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|Why is it that you guys come out swinging the instant someone says anything about Firefox? Give it a rest and just accept the comments as the Opinion of the person givining it. From their perspective, they have a valid reason for saying it otherwise, it wouldn't have been said.
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|Sorry, it's not a valid argument if there is no posted evidence to substantiate it.
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|Firefox 1.0.1, 1.0.2, & 1.0.3 mean anything to you?
Firefox has its fair share of security holes, along with Tiger. Nobody rips into them about it like people do into Microsoft, though.
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|zridling said "much like the 'spreadfirefox" folks ignore every new security hole"
and then
spiffyjeff said "What are these security holes and exactly how are they ignored?"
followed by
athome saying "Why is it that you guys come out swinging the instant someone says anything about Firefox?"
to which I responded with
"Sorry, it's not a valid argument if there is no posted evidence to substantiate it."
which you came back with "Firefox 1.0.1, 1.0.2, & 1.0.3 mean anything to you?"
I don't see the correlation between your response and the conversation.
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|SpreadFirefox is about promoting Firefox. The Mozilla Foundation and developers handle the security holes. Evangelism has nothing to do with admitting something has flaws or fixing them.
And for future reference, including blanket biased statements like "how slow Tiger is" when you simply tried a friend's computer only serves to discredit your opinions in the first place. From firsthand experience, Tiger is actually quite speedy compared with Panther.
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|I guess he means that 3 updates to Firefox means it has security holes too, which nobody is disputing. Although I don't see how issuing 3 security updates is ignoring the problem.
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|my [opinion] exactly
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|i really don't see the logic
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|you are right, ms shouldnt be ripped into so much
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|THIS STORY IS NOT ABOUT FIREFOX!!
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|You wouldn't, and that my friend is another matter.
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|It's not about you either, thanks. :-P
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|Y'know, it's funny but if it were about me - we would be talking about me. But it ain't about me - and it ain't about Firefox!
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|LOL
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|Of course I am! Seriously! Love it or hate it you are going to run into it sooner or later once it does come out with a market share past the 90 percentile(current Windows users world-wide).
That and with all the changes, this could very well be the version of Windows that makes everyone turn their back? Maybe? (Doubt It!)
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