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Microsoft Plans Flickr Competitor
An anonymous reader writes "Judging by newly posted job calls, Microsoft is now working on a Flickr-like online photo service. ZDNet reports: '"This feature team is building a next-generation photo and video sharing service that will compete with Flickr, SmugMug and other photo web solutions today. This is a 'v1' opportunity," the ad said. And video will be a part of the effort, too: "This role will work across the new Windows Live division with teams like Spaces, SkyDrive, Messenger and Hotmail to construct a winning strategy for Microsoft in photo and video sharing." Evidently, Microsoft sees the effort as an online extension of its current desktop technology.' Gundeep Hora, at CoolTechZone, feels that such a service is unlikely to succeed, and lays out the numerous challenges the company will face upon entering the market."
Is this this same strategy which has brought us massive code bloat at the cost of random number security?
One of these days, someone is going to come up with an April Fools 'Virtual Wombat Herding' and Microsoft will "innovate" their own incarnation as it will be seen as a vital extension of its current desktop technology and won't they look the silly buggers.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
MS has yet to make one web app that gained any real steam. Do they really think they stand a chance of uprooting flicker? I thought they learned their lesson and deiced to just buy people who know what they are doing.
I was disappointed to find that that's a typo -- it sounded like a great site: "Get off my Second Life lawn, you lousy kids!"
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
"We want to make it easy and fun to enjoy your photos and videos, whether that is on the PC in your office, the Media Center in your living room, the XBox in your entertainment center, or on your mobile device when you are out and about."
Oh yeah? What about my iPod, Bill?
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
I'm always hesitant when I see phrases like "construct a winning strategy"... Cut the BS, what's going to make it better for me that what's out there already?
But Flickr just got its two billionth picture.
Has anyone noticed that MS has completely stop any semblance of innovation or improvement upon products, and is now instead chasing every single idea in Tech simultaneously?
.... the list is getting longer everyday. At some point, the death by a thousand cuts will occur. No single cut will have killed, only the combination of all of them.
Google, Yahoo, Linux, Apple
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Who gives a crap....
Microsoft Plans *.* Competitor
Víctor R. Ruiz
rvr(at)blogalia.com
Why the need to tie everything down onto the desktop? Integrating stuff can be nice if it serves a purpouse. When integrating things just because it often gives a worse product than it could be. Why not spend the development effort on bringing out the best possible product regardless of how its presented? Right now it really feels like the end product is way down on the list, long after "do it in .net or get fired", "make it suck" and "for gods sake tie it down onto the desktop".
HTTP/1.1 400
- The first release will only work on IE 7/Windows.
- It will require/use windows media player rather than flash. Or, even better, use that Silver-somethingorother-thingamajig that nobody has installed or uses.
- There will be 30 seconds of banners/ads before each movie starts
- It will not allow embedding of movies on other sites
- The interface will overuse Ajaxy web 2.0 (TM) technology, slowing down the interface/browser
- DRM will somehow have to be involved, such that even if you could save the stream your browser is playing, the content would be useless. Adding new components to Windows to reach this goal is perfectly acceptable. It won't have to run on other OS'es anyway so that's just fine, right?
- Bonus points if necessary DRM/windows media player updates are forced to install through the famous windows "critical" update system.
Finally, it will be a "me too" version of existing websites, not adding any new or worthwhile features. (maybe you will be able to "squirt" movies to your Zune - oh wait, you don't have a Zune).
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
It's a really nice idea: a lot of my friends shy away from Flickr because of its expansive, community-based idea of image storage and sharing - they want a private place to host family and personal photos. A lot of them already use Facebook and Picassa Web Albums extensively for exactly this reason. And remember: Yahoo! Photos shut down earlier this (last?) year. All those displaced people will be needing somewhere to go to for private photo hosting. A Yahoo! Photos-clone with support to public sharing of images, integrated with Live image search, the entire thing accessible by PhotoSynth (heck, forget the Yahoo! and the Live, just PhotoSynth by itself!) could be a huge draw, and Microsoft certainly has the money to undercut and outfeature anything Yahoo! and Flickr can throw up.
Personally, I'd love more competition in this field: it'd get us Flickrites more goodies from Flickr!
speaks for self
I followed the links you supplied and didn't have to look far at all before I ran into pages that were IE/Windows only. You want to take a guess at how many Flickr customers use an Apple?
Yes MS has a huge share of the desktop, in business it is near absolute, but that means all those millions of machines Apple keeps churning out HAVE TO END UP SOMEWHERE. In fact, I have strong personal evidence that Apples last longer, so that means there are a shitload of people out there on macs. This doesn't even count freaks like me on linux.
Does that matter? Yes, a sharing site, a social site, should just work. In Firefox, in Safari, in opera, on OSX on OS9 on Linux on BSD and yes even windows ALL all the way back to 98.
MS can't do this. Not because of a lack of skill, it just wouldn't occur to them. It simply ain't the way MS operates. They always will introduce some element that excludes large numbers of their own customers, let alone those on other OS'es or who don't use IE.
And that matters, because these sites are about sharing, not about worrying wether your viewer has the right browser/OS or indeed software installed.
Why do you think so many sites now use flash for their video player? Because it is the most reliable way of doing that, why do you think a lot of sites EVEN so still add a hard download link? Because the captures the last percentage of users.
The techies at MS may be capable, but somewhere in the Redmond beast there is someone with veto powers who ALWAYS injects something that kills it. Look at all their attemps with a universal login, they renamed it, redesigned it and it is still a dismall failure, because at no point did MS put the enduser first and not their own corporate interests.
The moment MS becomes capable (not in tech but in business decisions) to support other OS'es then its own, then MS will be succesfull on the web. Perhaps it is changing, silverlight might be a change and I did see a link to a .mov on photosynth. But the apps themselves are windows XP SP2 and Vista only (in fact one says XP only).
Check flickr, you won't be able to move for the mac lovers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I've noticed that every time a new product/service is announced, the media's prime focus is that it's a "competitor" of some earlier product? It's like, who cares about what it actually does, let's just talk about the "competition', "horse race", etc.
Maybe a company releases a product/service just to make money, not to compete or kill something else. Hell, I have multilple gmail, yahoo, and hotmail email accounts; I don't think of them as competitors (even though they are), they are just services to me. Sometime I buy Coke, sometimes Pepsi. I don't give a damn about the competition between the two.
So here we have the story, "Microsoft Plans Flickr Competitor (or 'Clone' as TFA says)" rather than "Microsoft Plans Online Photo Service" as the headline. Because all we care about is the competition aspect. *yawn*
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
As with any story involving Lord Sauron of Redmond, I have only one thing to say:
Google is a better company than Microsoft.
Do they mean 'v1' as in "version 1" or as in V1. Because you know, other empires had interests in 'v1' opportunities as well.
Seriously though, what will they include in this product that will make people want to switch away from the existing photo sharing sites? As a photographer I'm all for cool new features. But those features are worthless if they don't help me get things done better/quicker and the menu options for them keep moving around with each new release. What is the compelling reason to use their service, or are they playing a game of "Oh crap! Time to get caught up!"
This wouldn't just be competing against Flickr, but also Zooomr, SmugMug, Photobucket, Picassaweb, WebShots, etc. This space seems very crowded already. How many pictures do people want on public display anyway?
It doesn't take much thinking to see that this generalized concept is often false. In fact, many of the truly successful companies got to where they are by creating a new market, not beating out others in an established market. The Internet has seen many of these success stories (Google, eBay, etc.). In fact it can be a winning strategy (though arguably more difficult) to carve out a new niche of customers, rather than fighting over established markets (e.g. what Nintendo is doing with the Wii). Maybe a company releases a product/service just to make money, not to compete or kill something else. Ideally, yes. In fact, many companies would deliver a far better user experience (and probably make more money) if they focused on ways to establish a significant user base that was happy with the product, rather than always desperately trying to increase marketshare.
But, this obsession with "winning the competition" runs deep. For instance, many people won't consider Mac or Linux "a success" until it has significant marketshare--even though the current users of those platforms are very happy with their user experience. And, arguably, one of the reasons that the customer experience can be so good in these smaller markets is because the focus has to be placed on quality instead of quantity.
I'm going to do an online photo and video hosting service as well. It will work with Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. You will be able to upload your content and share it with friends and family - actually anyone in the world if you want. Imagine that.
I'm going to use something called "Linux" running "Apache" using "HTTP" and "FTP" protocols to do this on something called "co-located servers".
Oh. Wait. I've been doing this since the mid-'90s. Drats. Foiled again...
You know, if Microsoft was a proactive company instead of a reactive one, they might actually be able to legitimately claim that they are innovators. I'd say 95% of the crap they produce is the result of a response to products already available on the market. If you're going to copy somebody else's product, then it needs to be an improved version of it....this is one big reason why I have no doubt in my mind that Linux will eventually overtake Microsoft in the OS market.
I have a pro account on Flickr, which is nice. I use Flickr uploader and default them all to private (me only), then I sort through and adjust permissions. Some I make public, some I make family only, some friends only, and some are open to both friends & family.
The catch is that your friends & family have to register with yahoo.
if ( competingProduct.marketExists() && competingProduct.isCopyable() ) ourProduct = dodgePatents(competingProduct);
Microsoft sits on this rather impressive technology called Photosynth. I'm sure most of you have seen/tried the demo. If not, go there now (sorry guys, Windows only). MS has now optimized the algorithms sufficiently to allow home users to generate synths at their own machine. A "no comments" comment also hinted that MS is working on a video version of PhotoSynth. If they integrate PhotoSynth into a Flickr competitor they will have a *huge* appeal. It is all about appearance. This way you can allow guests to take virtual tours of your house, car, neighbourhood.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*