I've been watching this unfold at work and it's great to know it's now official. From the press release Microsoft and Yahoo! Announce Landmark Interoperability Agreement to Connect Consumer Instant Messaging Communities Globally we learn

SUNNYVALE, Calif., and REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 12, 2005 — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: “MSFTâ€) today announced a landmark agreement to connect users of their consumer instant messaging (IM) services on a global basis. The industry’s first interoperability agreement between two distinct leading global consumer IM providers will give MSN® Messenger and Yahoo!® Messenger users the ability to interact with each other, forming what is expected to be the largest consumer IM community in the world, estimated to be more than 275 million strong.

Being able to instant message between IM communities is one of the features most requested by MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger users, and Microsoft and Yahoo! share a commitment to provide IM interoperability while keeping consumer security and privacy first and foremost. In addition to exchanging instant messages, consumers from both communities will be able to see their friends’ online presence, share select emoticons, and easily add new contacts from either service to their friends’ list, all as part of their free IM service.* Yahoo! and Microsoft plan to introduce these interconnectivity capabilities between MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger to customers around the world in the second quarter of 2006, and in doing so expect to help make IM an even more useful part of consumers’ online communications and communities.

This is really good news and a step in the right direction with regards to interoperability across instant messaging applications. Now I have to go nag the folks across the hall about what this means for folks like me who use our "@yahoo.com" email addresses as our Messenger sign-in names. I already had to switch once from my "@microsoft.com" address when Microsoft started using Live Communication Server internally. 

I'll see what I can find out from folks when they get into work later today and report back.


 

Categories: MSN

More info keeps spilling out about the beta of the Hotmail "Kahuna" release. If you go to http://join.msn.com/mailbeta/features, you'll get an overview of the new features in the next version of Hotmail including screenshots. The list includes

As the saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words. It's a lot easier to appreciate the work that's gone into the next version of Hotmail when you actually see it. Even better is using it, so don't forget to sign up for the beta by going to http://www1.imagine-msn.com/minisites/hotmail/Default.aspx.


 

Categories: MSN

October 11, 2005
@ 02:32 PM

I never got to try out Google Reader last week because the service was too slow, so I gave it a shot again this morning. My thoughts on the application pretty much identical to Dave Winer's thoughts on the application where he wrote

I tried the Google news reader again, this morning, after it had loaded all my feeds (it seems to take quite a few hours to do that).This is the second blog-related product they've come out with recently that appears not to have been touched by human beings before it was introduced to the world (the other was the ridiculous blog search). I think they need to start using their own stuff before releasing it. And maybe look at the competition for ideas. When you're first into a market there's an excuse for being so wrong. But the first of this kind of software shipped six years ago. To give you a comparison, Visicalc shipped in 1979. By 1985 we had been through two generations of spreadsheets with Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel. Google's reader is a huge step backward from what was available in 1999. The arrogance is catching up with them.

I actually tried writing my own review but gave up because it kept seeming too negative and I try not to snipe at products made by our competitors. Still, I am stunned that they let this application out of door in the shape it's in.


 

October 10, 2005
@ 09:19 PM

I've seen a couple of complaints online from people who saw the video of the Hotmail "Kahuna" release but couldn't get into the beta. The beta is now open to the general public. If you'd like to sign up for the beta, just click on the link below and follow the steps listed

http://www1.imagine-msn.com/minisites/hotmail/Default.aspx

I'm totally digging the beta and have definitely been impressed with the improvements in the service. Kahuna is gearing up to be an excellent release.


 

Categories: MSN

October 10, 2005
@ 03:16 PM
From the post "Darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death. " on the Making Light blog

The nine Senators who voted against the anti-torture amendment:

  1. Sen. Wayne Allard [R-Colorado]
  2. Sen. Kit Bond [R-Missouri]
  3. Sen. Tom Coburn [R-Oklahoma]
  4. Sen. Thad Cochran [R-Mississippi]
  5. Sen. John Cornyn [R-Texas]
  6. Sen. James Inhofe [R-Oklahoma]
  7. Sen. Pat Roberts [R-Kansas]
  8. Sen. Jeff Sessions [R-Alabama]
  9. Sen. Ted Stevens [R-Alaska]
Henceforth to be known as the Nazgul.

(Meme via Jim Henley.)

If you haven't been following this story you can catch up on it in the Telegraph news article entitled Bush will veto anti-torture law after Senate revolt.


 

October 9, 2005
@ 11:45 PM

John Montgomery has a blog post entitled Why Ning? where he asks

Not to complain or anything, but I don't get Ning. For the past fifteen minutes, I've been clickning through hotornot-like scenarios. Some of them are hysterical (try "Which driver has the smaller penis?") and some are mundane (Which is the better beer?). But I'm looking for why this is the next bit thning and can't figure it out.

The potential that Ning presents is counterbalanced by how hokey it is. On the one hand, it is an attempt to cash in on the "Web 2.0" hype by creating a build-your-own-web2.0-website toolkit in much the same way build-your-own-eCommerce-website toolkits were popular a few years ago. I imagine the scenario outlined in Dave Winer's post Editorial: Ning harkens back to 1999 is closer to the truth than we suspect.

On the other hand, Ning points to the next stage in the evolution of building mash ups and web platforms. Forrester Research's Charlene Li has a post entitled The Roll-Your-Own Mash-up Challenge where she writes

Im at Web 2.0, which is just a great conference. One of the hot discussions is around mash-ups (def) which combines the functionality from two different applications into a new one. One of the best ones is housingmaps.com, which combines apartment rentals etc., from Craigs List and Google Maps.

To me, this is the next step in the "social computing", Web 2.0, or whatever-you-call-it evolution. First, we had personalized content a la RSS-generated content on My Yahoo! At the same time, widgets, which are now hitting their stride, gave us our own customized set of applications on the desktop

The next step now is creating customized applications that can be paired with the content of our choice - yup, mash-ups. (I wrote about this previously in the context of widgets.) But to do that today, you have to know Javascript, Flash, and AJAX. I'm looking forward to the day when there will be simple interfaces into these APIs so that consumers like me (OK, Ill admit, Im a pretty geeky, techno consumer) can create our own mash-ups.

This is because I think were just at the very tip of the revolution. Imagine if we could tap into the collective creativity of thousands, millions of consumers. How many times have you said to your self, "Wouldnt be nice if I could just." And heres the killer part - what if some built a platform for consumers to do this, and then enabled a way to SHARE those innovations? Some of them would float to the top (thanks to ratings, tagging, etc.) and you could actually start monetizing them. Now thats tapping into the power of consumers!

So heres my challenge - what mash-ups would YOU create? Add them to the comments below - Im curious to see what all you bright minds can come up with!

I personally think Ning is ahead of its time. What we need today is more web sites turning themselves into web platforms as well as business models for both the web platforms AND the developers building on these web platforms. As an industry we're still muddling our way through at this point. Once we've have an ecosystem of web platforms as well as sustainable business models for the various offerings, the next step is how to broaden the target of these platforms outside the traditional developer market. This is similar to the same way that Microsoft brought programming against COM components to the masses back in the 1990s with Visual Basic except this time the platform is the entire Web and not just one vendor's operating system.

That's why Ning is cool.


 

Categories: Social Software

Mini-Microsoft has a blog post on middle management at Middle Managers, Bureaucracy, and No Birds at Microsoft where he offers pointers to some counter arguments to his regular bashing of bureaucracy and middle management at Microsoft. The various linked posts and some of the comments do a good job of presenting an alternate perspective to the various complaints people make against bureaucracy and middle management.

Derek Denny-Brown, a friend of mine who just left Microsoft, has a blog post entitled The curse of Middle management where he writes

I had a long discussion with a friend of mine about Longhorn aka Windows Vista. He had just caught up with news and some of the recent interviews with Jim Allchin. He knew I had some involvement with the OS divisions, and was just generally curious for my perspective 2 weeks out of the company.

In my view, a lot of the problems at Microsoft stem from bad middle management. Microsoft has built up a whole ecology of managers, who are at least as concerned with their career as they are with making good decisions. I've interacted more than I like to admit. The effect is that upper management doesn't hear a clear story about what is really going on. I think the phrase I used was that they 'massage the message'. Combine that with long release cycles and lack of accountability falls out as an inevitability.

One of the reasons I left is because I just don't see any way out of that mess. I am humbled by MiniMicrosoft and his determination to be part of the solution.

I tend to agree with Derek about lack of accountability being a problem here. One thing I've noticed about bad middle managers is that (i) it is almost impossible to get them out of their positions and (ii) all it takes is one or two to seriously derail a project. I've personally been surprised at how many bad middle managers just keep on ticking at Microsoft. It seems it is a lot easier to see individual contributors or even VPs pushed out for incompetence than middle management (Dev Managers, General Managers, Product Unit Managers, Group Program Managers, etc).

It is also surprising how much damage, a well-placed yet broken middle management cog can be in the smooth functioning of the corprorate machine. I've lost count of the amount of times I've asked some member of a team that creates a much reviled project why they product sucked so much and the response would be "our test/dev/general manager didn't see fixing those problems as a high priority". As Derek states, it is even worse when you get the ones that present a false impression to upper management about how things are going. 

Michael Brundage also covered some of this in his essay on Working at Microsoft which is excerpted below

+ Company Leadership

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer get most of the press, but it's an open secret that all of the division heads (and their staff, and their staff) are top-notch. I'm (happily) oblivious to how that circle operates, so I can only judge them on their results.

Given that Microsoft's been convicted of monopolistic practices, it may shock you when I say that Microsoft's upper management strikes me as very ethical. They talk about ethical behavior all the time, and as far as I've seen, lead by example. Maybe I'm being naive, but I find Microsoft's upper management to be very trustworthy. They're also thinking very far ahead, and doing a good job getting the information they need to make solid decisions.

Microsoft's leaders are also very generous, and frequently encourage the rest of us to make charitable donations (both money and time) a priority. Giving is a large part of Microsoft's corporate culture.

It's refreshing to work at a company where you can trust that the upper echelon is smart, hardworking, and making right decisions. I don't have to worry that my general manager or vice-president will drive our division (or company) into the ground through incompetence or greed. Microsoft's no Enron or WorldCom.

- Managers

In contrast, most of the middle management should be tossed.

Did I mention I've had six or seven managers in five years? I've only changed jobs twice the others were "churn" caused by reorganizations or managers otherwise being reassigned. In fact, in the month between when I was hired and when I started, the person who was going to be my manager (we'd already had several phone/email conversations) changed! It's seven if you count that, six if you don't.

None of these managers were as good as my best manager at NASA. Of the six-seven managers I've had, I'd relish working for (or with) only two of them again. Two were so awful that if they were hired into my current organization (even on another team), I'd quit on the spot. The other two-three were "nngh" -- no significant impact on my life one way or another. I'd love to think this is some kind of fluke, that I've just been unlucky, but many other Microsoft employees have shared similar experiences with me.

I think part of the problem is that Microsoft doesn't generally hire software developers for their people- or leadership-skills, but all dev leads were developers first. Part of the problem is also that (unlike some companies that promote incompetence) good leads are usually promoted into higher positions quickly, so the companies best managers rise to the top. Consequently, the lower ranks are filled with managers who either have no interest in advancing up the management chain (which is fine) or else are below-average in their management skills (which is not).

But it's more complex than this. At Microsoft, many managers still contribute as individuals (e.g., writing code) and are then judged on that performance (which is mostly objective) as much or more than they're judged on their leadership performance (which is mostly subjective). Because individual developers have so much freedom and responsibility, it's easy and typical to give individuals all the credit or blame for their performance, without regard to the manager's impact. Conversely, managers' performance often does not translate into tangible effects for their teams (other than the joy or misery of working for them). For example, I can still get a great review score even if my manager is terrible. I think these factors contribute to management skills being undervalued.

Microsoft also suffers from a phenomenon that I've seen at other companies. I describe this as the "personality cult," wherein one mid-level manager accumulates a handful of loyal "fans" and moves with them from project to project. Typically the manager gets hired into a new group, and (once established) starts bringing in the rest of his/her fanclub. Once one of these "cults" is entrenched, everyone else can either give up from frustration and transfer to another team, or else wait for the cult to eventually leave (and hope the team survives and isn't immediately invaded by another cult). I've seen as many as three cults operating simultaneously side-by-side within a single product group. Rarely, a sizeable revolt happens and the team kicks the cult out. Sometimes, the cult disintegrates (usually taking the team with it). Usually, the cult just moves on to the Next Big Thing, losing or gaining a few members at each transfer.

I think these "cults" are a direct result of Microsoft's review system, in which a mid-level manager has significant control over all the review scores within a 100+ person group (so it's in your best interest to get on his/her good side), and conversely needs only a fraction of that group's total support to succeed as a manager (so it's in his/her best interest to cultivate a loyal fanclub to provide that support). The cult gives the manager the appearance of broad support, and makes the few people who speak out against him/her look like sour grapes unrepresentative of a larger majority. After a string of successes, the manager is nearly invincible.

Fortunately, these managers are unlikely to move further up the ranks, due to the inherent deficiences in their characters (which are usually visible to upper management and enough to prevent their advancement, but not so severe as to warrant firing them).

These "personality cults" always negatively impact the group eventually (while they're there and/or when they leave), but counterintuitively sometimes these personality cults have a large positive initial effect. Many successful Microsoft products have come into existence only through the actions of such personality cults. Some of these products even survived after the personality cult left for the Next Big Thing.

I totally agree with Michael's analysis. Like Derek, I'm unsure as to how one would go about reversing this trend. However I definitely think the way we assess accountability of folks in [middle and executive] management needs an overhaul.


 

Categories: Life in the B0rg Cube

October 9, 2005
@ 08:18 PM

Below is a mishmash of thoughts that crossed my mind while at the Web 2.0 conference last week.

  • If you attended the conference you'd have gotten the impression that "web 2.0" isn't about technology or about social effects, it is about money. Specifically "web 2.0" is a meme that tries to describe the characteristics of the new generation of startups that have gained success either by IPOing (e.g. Google) or being bought by large companies (e.g. Flickr). The targets of this meme are VCs (to tell them what kinds of companies to invest in), startups (to tell them what kinds of companies to emulate) and big companies (to tell them what kinds of companies to buy). The fact that there multiple panelists were VCs is also very telling.

  • Google is the new Microsoft. Several times during the conference, it was brought up that Google has replaced Microsoft as the company that Silicon Valley companies love to hate because it enters nascent markets and dominates them (e.g. there was visible negative reactions by some audience members to the announcement of Google Reader

  • Microsoft isn't on anyone's radar in this audience except as an example of an aging dinosaur or the butt of some joke. This is consistent with the impressions I've seen at other conferences such as ETech and Gnomedex.

  • Just like in the dotbomb days of 1999/2000, most "web 2.0" companies don't have a business model besides getting bought by a big company. The new crutch many of them lean on is Google AdSense when queried about how they plan to be profitable.

  • Sun Microsystems is living on borrowed time. Their business strategy now seems to be one giant Hail Mary play.

  • The folks at Yahoo! Inc totally get it. If I was at Google I'd probably spend as much time worrying about them as I do about Microsoft.

  • Meebo reminds me a lot of the dotbomb days. It's basically an AJAX version of Trillian.  Building an AJAX version of Trillian is cool from a geeky perspective but I honestly don't see them lasting long except if they get bought by some bigger player like Google, Yahoo!, MSN or maybe even Trillian.


 

Categories: Current Affairs

The panle on what teens want was hosted by Safa Rashtchy who asked questions of 5 teenagers. There were three males and two females.

Earlier in the day, I was chatting with Mike and I pointed out that all through th econference I hadn't heard mention of the kind of Web apps that excite the younger generation. I hadn't heard MySpace mentioned once, and the only times instant messaging came up was in the context of Skype being sold to eBay for $4 billion. The Web 2.0 conference seemed dedicated to applications mostly of interest to the twenty five and over crowd.

This changed during the session when Safa Rashtchy questioned the teenagers about various aspects of their computer usage. The notes summary below is mainly from memory since I didn't take notes during this session.

Three out of five of the teenagers used MySpace. One of them said he spends all his free times waiting for comments to his space. Another teenager said she had stopped using MySpace when she went to college because it was too "high school" and now she used Facebook which was more college oriented.

One of the teenagers said he spent up to $50 a month on ring tones. Four of them had iPods and all of them rarely [if ever] paid for music.  It seemed thay had all tried the iTunes Music Store at one time or the other but eventually succumbed to the lure of file sharing networks.

They all used AOL Instant Messenger and one other IM client. Two used MSN Messenger mainly because they had friends outside the US (Mexico & Brazil) and MSN Messenger is very popular outside the US. One or two used Yahoo! Messenger. None of them used Skype and in fact they sounded like they had never heard of it. They didn't seem interested

They all used Google for search.

Two of them had used eBay but worried about being ripped off online.  

When asked what kind of applications they'd like to see on the Web. They asked for "more free stuff" and "get rid of spyware".

The most amusing part of the session was when Safa was trying to find out what eCommerce sites they'd visit. He first asked where they'd buy a cellular phone and each kid said they'd go to the website of their current cellular service provider. Then Safa tried another tack and asked where they'd buy a CD player online and the first kid went "CD Player?" with the same tone of voice and expression on his face I'd have if asked where I could buy a record player online. The audience found this hilarious.

PS: This panel is almost identical to a similar one at the Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposium 2005 held earlier this year. MSR has a video of that panel available online.


 

Categories: Trip Report

After lunch on friday, there was a surprise session. John Battelle announced that he was going to have a conversation with Sergey Brin. Throughtout the interview Sergey came off as very affable and it's easy to see how he can tell his employees that their corporate motto is "Do No Evil" without them questioning its naiveté.  

John Battelle started off by asking "It's been a long strange trip to where you are today, how's your head?". Sergey responded that they were very fortunate to have started at Stanford. Being in Silicon valley turned out to be very helpful and influential to the course his life has taken today. When he and Larry first started Google they had planned to open source the Google code. The main reason they decided to start a company was because they needed money to purchase the significant computing resources that the Google search engine needed.

John Battelle then asked Sergey to respond to Terry Semel's comments from the previous day that Google is an extraordinary search engine but as a portal they probably rank as number 4. Sergey responded by jokingly stating that although their cafeteria is nice and they keep trying to improve the quality of the food, they aren't in the top 10 or top 100 restuarants in the world. This elicited loud laughter from the audience.

John followed up by asking Sergey what he thought of the comments by Yusuf Mehdi of Microsoft that they are now the underdog.  Sergey replied that he is very excited that Google is considered a leader in terms of technology. He knows they may not be number 1 when it comes to big business deals or creating huge platforms like Microsoft but they are definitely a technology leader.

John then asked Sergey whether he felt any pressure due to their high share of the Web search market and high stock market valuation. Sergey said he wasn't a valuation expert so he couldn't comment on that. As for high market share in the search market, he is glad that so many people use their search engine based on word of mouth. It shows they have built a quality product. They have some promotional partnerships but for the most part their market share has grown due to the great search experience they provide.

The next question from John was whether Google would keep the clean look on their search page. The response from Sergey was that they will continue with that look on their front page but there will arise the need for other kinds of products from Google. For example, GMail arose out of the need for a better user experience around Web mail. Not only have they improved the web mail experience for GMail users but they have also bettered the lot of users of competing services since competitive responses have increased the mail quota size on various services by 100 times or more.

John began his next question by bringing up a topic that had been an undercurrent in various conversations at the conference. Google has become the new Microsoft, in that they are the 800 lb. gorilla that enters markets and takes them over from existing players. John gave the specific example that the newly launched Google Reader has now scared vendors of web-based RSS readers. Sergey responded by pointing out that when Google enters markets it usually leads to good things for existing parties in the market because small companies get bought and new companies get funded. He used GMail as an example of the entrance of Google into a market leading to a flurry of positive M&A activity. Secondly, Sergey stated that some of their offerings are intended to benefit the Web at large. He said they created AdSense as a way for Web publishers to make money and stay in business. Google had become concerned that a lot of web publishers were going out of business which meant less content on the Web which was bad for their search engine.

The questions from John Battelle ended and a Q&A session with the audience began.

The first question asked was about the rumored office suite being developed by Google. Just like Ray Ozzie and Jonathan Schwartz had done when asked the question, Sergey said he didn't think that it made sense to simply port outdated ideas like the mini-computer to the Web. The audience laughed at the comparison of Microsoft Office to the mini-computer. Sergey did say that Google would likely be creating new kinds of applications that solved similar problems to what people currently use traditional Office suites to solve.

The next question from a member of the audience was whether Sergey thought that click fraud was a big problem for Google. Sergey felt that click feaud wasn't a big problem for Google. He said that like credit card companies they have lots of anti-fraud protections. Additionally their customers calculate their ROI on using Google's services and know they get value. Finally, he added that the algorithms that power their advertising engine are fairly complex and not easy to game.

Continuing with the "Google as the new Microsoft" meme, the next question from a member of the audience was what markets did Google not plan to enter in the near future so VCs could tell where was safe to invest. Sergey joked that he thought the various markets entered were good investments. His serious response was that Google is a very bottom up company, and their engineers usually end up deciding what becomes products instead of directives from the executives. John Battelle then jumped in and asked if the company wasn't being directed in its recent offerings then how come most of the offerings seem to be echoing the offerings found in traditional portal sites. Sergey's response was that it was probably because Google's engineers wanted to build better products than the existing offerings in the market place.

I asked Sergey that given Terry Semel's comments that search only accounts for about 5% of page views on the Web while content consumption/creation and communications applications made up 40% of user page views each, what was Google's vision for communications and content related applications. Sergey said that Google definitely plans to improve the parts of the Web where people spend a lot of their time which is part of the motivation for them shipping GMail.


 

Categories: Trip Report