Tales From Behind Microsoft's Firewall

lizzyben writes "CIOinsight.com is hosting an interview with Robert Scoble on life after Microsoft. 'By blogging for the world's largest software company, Scoble changed the way companies communicate with the world and became an industry celebrity in the process.' He talks about MS culture, senior management and the benefits of blogging from inside the belly of the software beast." More from the article: "We used blog-search engines to find anyone who wrote the word 'Microsoft' on their blog. Even if they had no readers and were just ranting, 'I hate Microsoft,' I could see that and link to it, or I could participate in their comments, or send them an e-mail saying, 'What's going on?' And that told those people that someone was listening to their rants, that this is a different world than the one in which no one listens. It was an invaluable focus group that Microsoft didn't have to pay for."

Comments

Gimme a f'ing break

[Anonymous Coward]

We used blog-search engines to find anyone who wrote the word 'Microsoft' on their blog.

Gee, that's a lot of hits. And you're telling me straight-faced that you responded to them? Oooh right... to some of them? Huh? How many? 4? Well, in a sea of about 18,700,000 you did pretty well, wouldn't you say so?
Give me a fucking break;

Re:focus groups and corporate bs

[hutchike]

It would be easier for Microsoft to just buy the 90% of Apple they don't already own, and assimilate it "borg-style". I can't see those guys up in Seattle writing anything nearly as good as OS X in my lifetime. Hell, they would even have a decent MP3 player and produce laptops with enough juice to run Vista.