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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
"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
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
if ( competingProduct.marketExists() && competingProduct.isCopyable() ) ourProduct = dodgePatents(competingProduct);
The catch is that your friends & family have to register with yahoo.
That's kind of a massive, deal-breaking catch. IMO, it renders the feature absolutely useless. It's arrogant to demand that people register and get a stupid Yahoo account just to look at photos (would I do that? hell no; I'm not going to ask anyone else to).
A better system would work more like Google's Picasa system, which lets you make an "unlisted" album with a special URL, and email that URL out to anyone you want. As long as someone has the URL, they can view the album.
Such features have been a hot request item on Flickr for more than two years now, but the developers seem stubborn about not implementing them. I don't know if it's some deal they have with Yahoo, to try and get more people signed up with Yahoo accounts, or something else entirely, but they're shooting themselves in the foot, big time.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
On the other hand ... Someone has already mentioned PhotoTours and
GroupShot in an earlier post, and they really are quite cool.
Do these qualify as proactive ?
My first thought was "Wow, can't wait until someone does an open source version of these that runs on Linux". But if someone did release an open source version of these, would that be reactive ?
I think we are all playing catch up with each other.
Not completely true. You can give friends and family special "guest pass" urls that allow them to look at non-public photos of your choice without needing to register with flickr/Yahoo.
Linky
Of course, they can't comment etc. unless they register. They can only view.
I say we take-off and slashdot the site from orbit... it's the only way to be sure
Um, what? You can do exactly that on Flickr - it's called a Guest Pass:
http://www.flickr.com/help/guestpass/
So much for your little conspiracy theory that Flickr intentionally isn't implementing a wanted feature in order for Yahoo to gain more accounts.