Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Will Try Out Blog Service In Japan
theodp writes "Signaling its growing awareness of blogging as both a potential threat and a new business opportunity, Microsoft is turning to Japan to launch its first blog service and aims to have 1 million users in the first year. Not surprisingly, Microsoft's offering targets mobile bloggers, since nearly 90 percent of Japan's cell phones have Internet capability."
Just look at what Google is doing today.
Does anyone think they're going to have much luck with a program like this in a market that is as flooded as the blog market? There are so many options for blog creation out right now i have a feeling microsoft will be getting a run for it's "money" or worse with a step like this. I can't help but expect failure.
...Brog Service in Japan.
I actually quite like it... Slashdot is just pissed off because it used to be a News Site and now everyone is calling it a Blog :-)
I guess you can MS blog now.......IN JAPAN! :)
;)
I thought blogging was on the downhill slope anyway, with the problems at Orkut (the Brazlian issues, the invite style of membership).....
TFA also talks about MS thinking that their blog should become some form of "business communication"....Bah! I'd take a press release and a PR firm over a nerd with a blog anyday
My MythTV HowTo
Microsoft just wants to get its fingers into every pie that it can. Today it's blogging. Tomorrow it'll be a search engine. Next week it'll be jacket-powered palmtops or some such crap.
(I get the feeling that the most popular screen colour for these Japanese blogs will be blue, for some reason.)
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
I predicted before this would become a new trend. American companies will start launching "high-tech" startups in companies like Japan first, to see how they are received, before trying them on the American market. The general public seems to be more receptive to technology in some European and Asian markets, as evidenced by their wide use of wireless and mobile technologies.
It will be interesting to see how this affects the way we do business.
So on to the important question: will the Slashdot duplicate read "Microsoft will try out blog service in Japan... in Japan"?
M$ clearly considers Google a threat.Google acquired blogger and M$ ofcourse perceives blogging is the next best thing. GOOGLE'S CORE VALUE : "Dont Be Evil"
fifteen jugglers, five believers
...is that this is Microsoft's first use of slashcode.
How do you type Japanese characters on a cell phone? Is it anything like press e three times for the charcter 'C'?
Okay, I'll confess ignorance. I have two questions about this new Microsoft service.
1) How is a Blog Service any different from Slashdot journals?
2) Why would people pay money to Microsoft to post comments and short, misspelled paragraphs about their lives?
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
(Finally got a dang account in 2004)
Just look at what Google is doing today.
;)
Or what Apple did yesterday.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
"im on trn
hm soon
btw im nt wrkin wknd."
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Yes another bad idea from Microsoft. When is Microsoft going to issue a public apology for Windows ME? All jokes aside, it looks like Microsoft is trying to counter Google's blogger.com
I remember when blogging ment beating the shit out of someone. And buy reading the post I'm not sure it's not, I can see Microsoft, beating people over the internet. Or atleast letting random people in todo it through the window.
It may very well be that corporate 'blogs' will be limited in their allowed communication scope - more like a 'look how fun and skilled we are' and 'menu for today' type of things.
With the rampant IP filings (software patents), any real information about a companies offerings could be reworded and patented, thereby forcing a legal battle, which small companies would lose financially (i.e. - 25% of budget to legal fees vs. product research/marketing).
Don't you mean: ... IN JAPAN!! ??
Microsoft Will Try Out Blog Service
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
will be released in Japan with a embed blog post system.
Nop, ... in Japan ... in Japan
more like "they are 1 million people blogging... in Japan"
or
1 million people find blogs usefull
and last
MS finds business opportunity
Or what Zerox did day before yesterday ;) ;)
Striving to be common...
Whats the problem?? Just use your mobile to connect to your blog-host edit the darn file, and .... SAVE!
HUH??
Service Unavailable
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Or what Microsoft is doing the day after yesterday.
They couldn't possibly make one worse than Orkut. Orkut is the slowest most worthless POS I have ever had the displeasure to use. Honestly. The Brazilian issue isn't even a big deal, or it wouldn't be if they provided ways of searching by region/language. As it is when you search for a community you get a list of 13,000 over half of which will be in portugese. You have no options for filtering it. Orkut is unusable during the day, it's literally that slow. It takes several minutes just to login. If google was smart they would drop the "affiliate" part and just cut it loose. The only thing I hate more than Orkut is probably LiveJournal.
If MS does this right I'll use it. It must be fast, foster a good community vibe and be user friendly. Oh yeah and all this "Must be invited to use our dog slow and shitty service" won't be tolerated either. MS is smart though, I doubt they'll be so dumb as to make it invite only.
Do you think Bill Gates will buy an "I'm blogging this?" T-shirt?
Yeah, Google certainly edged their way into this years-established trend weeks before Microsoft!
Or what Microsoft tried to do 10 years ago but realized they where a "software company" and got out of... Remember MSN? The next AOL? DIdn't fly then will not fly now. Build a decent OS and they will come. Sprinkle little flashy things all over it, and they will barf.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
They're just conducting some market research.
Aah when you blog in Japan-tonight...
Blog in Japan-be-tight...
Blog in Japan...ooh the eastern sea's so blue
Blog in Japan-alright
Pay! - Then I'll sleep by your side
Things are newsy when you blog in Japan
Oh when you blog in Japan...
I don't mean to be a flame, but I don't get blogging. Reading people's online diaries does not appeal to me in the slightest. I think it is beyond stupid, especially to conceive that someone would actually WANT to read someone else's "blog." It just bogs the internet down with more WORTHLESS GARBAGE. I also HATE the expression "blog." (I say expression, because, it's not a word and hopefully never will be!)
I just hope there's not a Japanese equivalent of "I ate a sandwich today. It sucked. I hate my life and my parents because they make me do homework. Linkin Park is the only thing I relate to. " (grammar and spelling have been corrected)
www.google.com
Uhh Google is a search engine. What does that have to do with blogs?
rubbish. real hackers use cat
Microsoft Will Try Out Blog Service ..... in Japan! :D
Many of us were on the 'net before Microsoft.com was registered. Microsoft almost missed the boat on the Internet. Microsoft almost missed the boat with XML and other technologies as well.
Microsoft is now trying to figure out open source, GPL, and the like. They aren't trying to defeat it because they don't understand it. They're tone deaf - they can't sing or play an instrument because they don't understand it, no matter how hard they try - but they can come close.
In the meantime, they continue the process of trying to sew up things others have show to be ready to break free.
Could OpenSource et. al. be what turns Microsoft into an IBM? (one could only hope)
I am laughing my ass off.
What is a "Brazilian issue"?
What does Orkut have to do with blogs?
The only complaint I have with Orkut is that their "forgot-my-password" thingie seems not to be working.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Spike Lee will be introducing mobile blogging for the Afro-American community (in Japan). He is calling this new service "Mo Better Blogging".
What next, you ask? Is Spike Lee the only movie director to get involved in this development? The answer is no, friends. Spike Jonz will be introducing a service in Japan called "Blogging John Malkovich".
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
By including a link to their sites in each blog entry, M$ sites will finally have a high enough pageranking on Google!
This is the correct Enligshification...
I don't know why people would do blogging on other poeple's sites, I do mine over at my one site, That way I can change the code of the software if I want, (which I have a little bit, but 99.99999% of the code is still untouched bblog software)
I admit I pay others to host my site, I would like some day to bring the hosting off of another persons computers and get the bandwidth and server 100% under my control, but for now this is an acceptiable solution.
Well, since it's invitation only. . . how is anyone without an invite supposed to know? Orkut's about page makes NO mention of a blogging feature. It specifically states that it is "an online community website designed for friends" and a "social network".
Satoshi doesn't seem to be making blanket assumptions, but provisional ones that could be based on information available on the Orkut website. (You'll have to ask him where he got his information.)
Cool your jets, big boy. Nobody has been pissing in your cornflakes, at least not here.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Maybe I've got Xbox on the brain today, but I can't help but wonder if the MS Blog service in Japan will be used in part to promote the Xbox and Xbox games there. Not only that, I could see this being intergrated with XboxLive in Japan as well. With 90 percent of Japanese cell phones having internet access, they'd have a great way to reach a large audience.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
so will the blog be filtered, pro-MS and slow as all hell? Of course it will have to use Sql Server, webservices and a ton of XML. In fact it will be hosted on LongHorn.
I think you mean Romaji (with Wikipedia goodness).
Common mistake -- even Wikipedia redirects a search on Romanji to Romaji automatically...
All your blog are belong to us?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Or what Xerox did 20 years ago
Microsoft blogs YOU!
sorry..
Microsoft does run a site called "The Spoke," at http://www.thespoke.com. I'll admit that I don't know anyone who uses it (and it's badly broken in Firefox), but it's got Blogs and "Copyright Microsoft 2004" at the bottom. So it's not quite fair to say this is their first entry into the world of blogging.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized. -AC
True that Japanese seem to love M$, however close examination reveals that they seem to think that the Blue Screen is a new PHP app.
Since when is making fun of a foreign language racism? "Oh look, we English-speaking people have sloppy, drawn out vowels!" Is that actually insulting to you?
On a related note, can't Political Correctness just fucking die already?
If you do Windows development or are just interested in some of the less obvious parts of the design of Windows (I'm the latter of these), The Old New Thing by Raymond Chen, who works for Microsoft, can be quite interesting. I mostly read just the "History" category, but others might find the "Code" category a good read as well.
There are quite a few "blogs" like this for different things. I remember reading one from a game developer some time ago, but I just stopped in for one article about general game design so the name and relevant company didn't stick in my head.
Disclaimer: IANAJM (Japaense Major)
With the exception of -n, no Japanese syllable ends in a consonant (though the vowels are sometimes silent depending on emphasis.) They might be able to handle the L (I've heard several Japanese people--eh, well, *anime characters* use the English L perfectly), but I'm pretty sure that the BR consonant blend doesn't exist. So yes, the resulting phonetic translation would be pretty much unintelligible.
Dutch is funny as hell. I defy you to visit the Netherlands and keep a straight face when you see a gondola captain cussing out someone who just cut him off. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the culture--it's just an utterly foreign sound that your ears must get used to before you can get over the humor. I don't find Japanese funny at all anymore, simply because I've watched so much subbed anime...
Spanish is funny because it is (or seems to be, anyway) so much faster than English. Japanese is funny (I guess) because it's so gutteral. Swedish and Dutch are so funny because of the wildly fluctuating pitches. German (and to a lesser extent, Russian) is funny because it sounds so hard and militaristic. With the exception of this last one, NONE of these things has anything to do with the country itself and all of these reactions will disappear if one spends enough time around that language. Maybe this reactions are silly or even offensive, but they're not half as offensive as someone who calls them racist.
Didn't see it at all, in fact, as I was too busy screaming at Firefox for crashing every other second. Was replying to the parent, who said simply "Brog." In actuality, the L is probably the least severe problem with translating "Blog" into Japanese, and yours fits nicely.
If MS got any sense then this will be a service available to all but crippled on non-ms phones. The x-box may be a poor seller but it is free sex compared to the MS-phones. In japan getting people to buy their phones may be enough to twart the fear that the PC is going to be replaced by the mobile annoyer.
A square blog?
Moderator here. I moderated your correction in parent as Insightful, but moderated the post where you made the mistake as Overrated. It wasn't really Offtopic or redundant, it would have been informative if it hadn't been stuck to the wrong parent. At least your karma remains the same.
Sabisu! Sabisu!
I can't help notice the completely random accusation that Microsoft thinks blogging is a "potential threat."
Barring the fact it's just another random Slashdot statement with no backing evidence, I guess Longhorn Blogs, Channel 9, and the massive MSDN blogs from actual Microsoft employees are threatening their own company.
In the past few years, Microsoft has become incredibly open as a company. I think Slashdot has greatly underreported that fact, and as a result, people here have a wrong impression about Microsoft's developers. Slashdotters should step outside of Slashdot once in a while for its tech news.
Uhh Google is a search engine. What does that have to do with blogs?
Google owns Blogger.
MS Usenet?! Oh god, the little clippy will notice i am reading a thread and ask to help...
"Microsoft is turning to Japan to launch its first blog service ..."
Um, what about http://blogs.msdn.com/? "It's sooo small, it's internal only..", etc etc. So what? It's still an M$ blog.
Of course! The threat model! Everything Microsoft does is a strategic military move against the Resistance.
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
That's what I thought it said at first glance. I thought WOW! Microsoft must be even bigger and more powerful that I thought, now they're gonna try to outblog a whole country!
One thing occurs to me about Microsoft blogging: Will people be able to criticise Microsoft, and/or endorse open source etc ?
I'm not sure if it apochraphal (?spelling) but didn't Microsoft write a clause into the Frontpage license that forbade licensees from using it to publish any material that was anti-Microsoft ?
I suppose the flipside of this is that if Microsoft implement filtering and censorship, then they may be able to create a 'clean' blogging area and appeal to a more family audience, much as AOL does.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
Sorry, but how can a blog be a threat to anyone?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In English, we use our tongue against the top of our mouths to make the letter L, but we do not use our tongue to make the letter R. Most Japanese can handle L pretty easily after some guidance because the Japanese sounds also use the tongue on the top of the mouth, though in more of a rolling from back to front motion. Actually, the closest sound to the Japanese sounds I have found in other languages is the Spanish single R sound.
Anyway, making light of the Japanese (language) confusion of R and L has nothing to do with race or racism. If a pasty, white boy like myself had been raised from birth in Japan with little or no English training, I wouldn't be able to make the English R sound either.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I often find it annoying to type in English on my phone, which is probably why I don't really like mailing my non-Japanese friends from my phone. The difference is amazing. For example typing the following on my phone (the Japanese would be Japanese characters, but /. doesn't seem to like them):
Where are you now? : 18 characters (counting spaces), 41 button presses
ima doko? : 4 characters (in Japanese), 16 button presses
BTW, this was with my own typing style on a DoCoMo P251iS phone (YMMV). The Japanese can be even shorter as it remembers recently used kanji and words so sometimes you can really speed through it. English however is much slower, even if you shorten it.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
For those who don't get it, sometimes there is confusion between green and blue when speaking Japanese because many times they use the word aoi for both. For example:
ao-zora: blue sky
shingo ga aoi: greenlight (traffic signal)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
...I'm going to have to DDoS myself.
Everything has to appear to be a threat. I guess it's true: Only the paranoid survive...
:)
And a quote on the same topic:
"Why you always wanna make it a fight?!"
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
1. Microsoft to launch blogging service... in Japan.
2. ???
3. Profit!
But heay, look on the bright side. At least Blogs aren't launching Microsoft service in former Soviet Russia.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Don't forget blogs.msdn.com where a lot of MS developers have blogs.