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Microsoft's Vista Blogger Quits
Preedit writes "Nick White, the in-house Microsoft blogger who wrote about all things Vista, has resigned.
White is leaving Redmond to join the blog-centric marketing and public relations firm BuzzCorps.
White did not provide a reason for his decision. InformationWeek, however, notes that his position could not have been easy. White's posts often elicited hundreds of responses from Vista users complaining about the OS's numerous glitches and quirks.
The story further notes that White is the sort of young, blogosphere-savvy manager that Microsoft needs if it hopes to outrun Google, and his departure raises questions about the company's ability to retain Web 2.0 talent."
The guy was a marketroid who got payed to blog about stuff. I'm guessing the motivation is that his new company offered him a basketload of money to blog about something else, and he took it.
Man finds new job, quits old one. News at 11.
First off the ship indicates what exactly?
"Web 2.0 talent" = Oxymoron?
C'mon - when was the last time writing anything that popped into your mind considered a "talent". Blogs...yeesh. I still can't figure out who has the time to read those things.
What would shed more light on this is whether White had access to technical staff who could provide behind the scenes information and support when responding to these users. Further, whether these staff had an idea and an understanding of why it is important to respond to these users, and the Web 2.0 world, where two way interaction and many to many communication is the norm.
If he was left out there in the cold on his own, it's no surprise he resigned.
The Mothership
Where do I find the posting for the open position?
You just know that Steve wants to throw a chair. Btw never read him.
Last one out - please close the lights.
Huhh? Web 2.0 talent?
It is tough being the public face of a company. One of my friends was the spokesman for a large aerospace company. He was always "on-call" and had to be familiar with a ton of information at his fingertips.
In contrast, a blogging spokesperson sounds easy, as you can triple-verify everything through the tech staff, legal, and the upper echelons before publishing.
I'd be quite surprised if he left due to anything related to Vista. Heck, MS paid him to support Vista, and I'm sure he will continue to do so under the principle of "never bash a former employer until you retire".
Instead, I think he left for either an easier life and/or more money.
Oh my. Oh my. Oh my.
#5 Rest room cleaner for the Saints Stadium after Katrina.
#4 Tank Ammo Tester (Think Bugs Bunny).
#3 Amish Mechanic (What do you call a man with his arm up a horse's Ass?)
#2 Thong Adjuster for Janet Reno. (Close your eyes and visualize it..AIEEEEEE)
#1 Microsoft Pro Vista Blogger.
Seriously, I wonder how long he had that job for. And now, how long will he need a shrink to regain his self esteem ?
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
So what I surmise is that if you get paid to do something, then what you do must take talent. Dang, my garbage man is really talented!
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
...selling ice to Eskimos.
his departure raises questions about the company's ability to retain Web 2.0 talent.
No, you guys have it all wrong. White was "let go" so that Microsoft could bring in "fresher" Web 3.0 talent. God only knows what the next "Catch All" web term will be, and Microsoft has to be ready for it.
I used his blog, it was pure PR. If you want real M$ news go to www.activewin.com. To think one guy leaves M$ is enough to make you smell blood in the water is quite hilarious.
That word sounds like some type of intelligent hemmorhoid. It makes me want to punch babies.
Anyways!
Given the amount of crap he probably had to take on a daily basis I doubt I could blame him. I'll happy polish a turd if you pay me enough money, but it comes to a point where no amount of money can cover the mental stress from having to polish a turd and taking flack from the owners of that turd. I would not have been able to keep it up for as long as he did, polishing that turd. I hope he is happier where he is going and less stressed. Good luck man.
BTW, trying to see how many times I could use 'turd' in a post, because I'm sophomoric like that.
Final turd count: 6
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
It's got a long way to go to beat "Netizen" or "Podcast".
I assume you're disqualifying "Blogosphere" because it's derived from "Blog".
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Sorry dude. It's Web 2.0 Service Pack 1
Tell the truth about Vista to people who already pretty much know it, or
Toe the corporate line and continue to receive paychecks and promotions.
Oh the pressure!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I hear the US Military is hiring bloggers. >.>
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
In fact I'd really love a Google feature that would let me search the web without blogs. Don't give them as results, don't factor in blog links to the rankings. I find that they are useless a good bit of the time, and worse than useless the rest.
For example something that has happened to me a number of times: I'm trying to accomplish something with new software, or find information on it or something like that. I do a search, first result is something talking about what I want. Great, I follow the steps. No dice, their description is oversimplified, or left something out, or just plain incorrect. Ok fine, back to Google... Except now all the other links I start finding are just blogs, quoting the original verbatim, and then linking to more blogs. It is one giant circle jerk of misinformation.
The problem is it can drown out the useful shit because of the number of links. The blogs all seem to link around to each other, and everything is saying the same thing, so it gets more value than it should.
I'd love to be able to search the web with an "ignore blogs" option. I find that forum posts are far more useful than blogs in general, and that is saying something.
...Vista victim.
factor 966971: 966971
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'd be willing to wager that he got tired of getting paid to lie. Which is precisely the reason I will never again work for Microsoft or any of their sub-companies. I can take a lot of crap from an employer, but when they tell me to flat-out LIE to customers, that's when it's time to move on.
"Oh, Florida. Just think, somewhere in this state, right now, Jeb Bush is eating a live puppy."
Recent surveys indicate Microsoft's overall regard by college and university students has dropped over 40 points in relation to other, similar businesses since last year. Meanwhile, Apple was ranked #1 as having the most desirable image.
.COM/.BOMB fiasco - survivors included Amazon and eBay. Both of those sites didn't do so bad for themselves, did they?)
Today's college and university students are tomorrow's tech. consumers, so it actually IS important to maintain a good image with them.
Yes, paid corporate blogging and much of this other "Web 2.0" stuff is ultimately going to be shown to be more "fluff" than worthwhile pursuit. Still, sites like MySpace and Facebook are part of this "next generation of web apps", and by all counts, they DO succeed in keeping the attention of the younger computer-using audience. (History repeats itself, folks. Despite the nay-sayers who were USUALLY quite correct about all the stupid e-commerce ideas springing up all over during the
Microsoft just doesn't want to miss out again, if they ignore the wrong trend and it balloons into something huge....
Right now, their image is really tarnished on many fronts, including the "red ring of death" issues with XBox 360's AND the choice of backing the wrong HD technology for DVDs, the whole Vista fiasco, and an overall perception that the latest updates to their products don't offer very much for the money. (I just don't see nearly the level of "excitement" over the Office 2007 release that I remember people having when, say, Office 2000 came out. Most people using it just seem to be doing so because it was bundled with a new computer system purchase, or they needed to buy it to be legal on a new PC that didn't come bundled with it. Many of these people are students who got a huge price break through their school.)
Honestly, I think as much as people liked to bash Microsoft in the past, they often had a love/hate thing going on. It was difficult not to admire Bill Gates for his success, and/or for his willingness to donate to charities. People were really interested to see documentaries showing the inside of his mansion and so on. He generated a certain amount of "buzz" whenever he gave a speech to discuss his views on technology and ideas for the future. But now, Gates has pretty much retired and people like Steve Balmer are the new "figureheads". Who thinks of Balmer and thinks of anything positive?? He's often referred to as "monkey boy" and is best known for throwing chairs.
Wow. My first really intrusive slashdot ad. I was confused by the huge dell ad that seemed to be covering the story and comments until I finally realized I had to click something to get past it.
I want to give slashdot kudos for thinking of ways to inspire me to stop slacking off at work reading their site.
And Microsoft was sort of able to do one thing that no other company could really do. Microsoft was (more or less) able to build some really huge software projects in a few years. Such as WinNT/Win2000 and the Office suite. I'm not saying they were perfect, but they were good enough. And nobody else could execute projects on that scale.
My reading of the (years late, mediocre) release of Vista is that Microsoft has lost that one unique ability. My guess is that the kind of coders that used to put in their 7 years at MS are now headed elsewhere, such as Google. And without that steady supply of top tier talent, MS can't innovate quickly. Regarding the loss of one PR flack, PFFFFFT!
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
This story is certified Buzzword-Compliant (R).
If those numbers are correct, that's really astonishing considering Apple doesn't do any of that Web 2.0 social media stuff. No blogging, no pre-release hyping of products, no pandering to the MySpace generation, nothing. If that sort of transparency and outreach were truly important to college and university students, one would expect those numbers to be reversed.
But in this case, Apple has "rock star" status, and that's enough. They're also not Microsoft, which apparently helps too.
Making a big story out of his resignation (not to mention saying it hurts Microsoft) is stupid.
I see that he did this so that he will have a way to monitor the blog posters and "censor" the bad stuff about Vista on behalf of Microsoft.
If you can't beat them join them and subvert them like done with the ISO cert on OOXML.
Doesn't surprise me a bit IMHO.
He said he was leaving Infoworld to go work at Microsoft in this week's column, but nobody believed him.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'd say this man's story is less a tale about how Microsoft can't retain bloggers, and more a tale about Vista being so flawed that it's easy for someone to get burned out whilst spinning it as great.
The Freelance Wizard
After a massive, high-pressure project, isn't a certain amount of turnover expected? No matter what the outcome, I'd think. Some folks burn out, or just get tired of it. Maybe they feel like they took too much of the blame (or someone else the credit), or now that the project is over the new day-to-day tasks (or new projects) don't interest them the same way. Also, they've added to their resume, and might be very desirable to other employers.
I had to comment on this one. The guy posts blogs. Are you saying Web 2.0 (aka blog spotter) is more important than a .NET savy desktop engineer =)
Also not to mention this but has anyone noticed all of the people leaving Google? Lets compare a blogger leaving to the CIO of the company?
I was not aware that the web have a production cycle. Where can I buy the latest version of the web or can I sign up for beta testing of Web 1.90c? I am also worried that my Web 1.0 won't be compatible with Web 2.0 when it comes out. Will Microsoft release a patch to update my web? Help me Slashdot Web Gurus. Enough with this "Web 2.0" crap. Is this even a real designation? I have even heard of "Web 3.0" being bandied around by the same people who use words like "leveraging", "paradigm-shift" and "synergy".
Link to surveys, please.
College students are also in that age range that suffers from acne, worries about their first sexual encounter and frets about being individual enough to stand out from the crowd yet not be too far removed from it. That age range has a huge amount of marketting targetted at it that basically says "Buy this or you are a complete wanker" because that kind of marketting plays on their fears about standing out from the crowd. It is this sheep mentality that is the reason why the mediocre Harry Potter books, for example, can be huge global bestsellers.
The fact is that it is not "cool" to like Microsoft and whilst fat blokes in their 40s like me hopped off the "Fashion Bus" 20 years ago and stepped into elasticated waist jeans without giving a toss about "cool", such is not the same for students.
I suspect a lot of them say Apple is cool because they like iPods (and please bear in mind that the success of the iPod is due to the fact that most people own "uncool" Windows PCs to download music to it) and know no better - the reality is that for poor students without rich mummies and daddies, Apple computers and phones are far more expensive than the more common equivalent stuff.
In other words, it's a meaningless statistic because at least here, in Europe, it's rare to see anyone with a Mac.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
You may be surprised, but Apple has had forums, blogs, support circles, and design groups that act as "social networks" - for years prior to their web-title as such a thing. But they're in a different space from years of productivity:
Drop into a graphic design firm, photographer, printer, game studio, music studio, or any of thousands of ancillary businesses. You'll find appleheads who have long since moved on from the "be my friend" webosphere to actually just using a computer as a tool in a network of real people.
I'm not pro-apple by a long shot (no businesses here paying me to code on that platform), but I own a few of their machines and they're quite useful (thinking about our use of Garage Band, Aperture, Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc).
I met him at Vista event in Beijing. Quite nice person. Even Vista evangelism is a hard job, he did it well on communication with community.
I don't get it how does taking it up the ass make your dick stink?
Repetition becomes tedious.
But the Slashdot Geek seems to live within a bubble that no outside force can penetrate - without, of course, being modded down into oblivion.
"But, frankly, Scarlet, I don't give a damn."
Here are the links again, whether you like them or not:
MS Office
The Year of Office 2007
Microsoft SharePoint taking business by storm
"The "magnitude of Office sales relative to the rest of the PC software market" is phenomenal. It's the massively huge tail wagging the dog."
"The talk [around SharePoint] is getting strategic now, and people are talking about it as a middleware decision. MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) 2007 is the fastest growing product in the company's history."
MS Financial
Microsoft Q2 2008 by the Numbers
"Just four years ago, the majority of revenue came from North America. Now, 60 percent of sales are outside the United States. For the quarter, Microsoft sales increased 30 percent in emerging markets, 20 percent in established markets like Europe and 15 percent in the United States."
OS Market Share [Net Applications]
March 2008
OS Share Trend May 2007 - March 2008
OS Share Trend By Versions May 2007-March 2008
MS Vista 14% Up 10% from May 07
Win XP 82% Down 9%
OSX 8% Up 1%
Linux 0.6% Up 0.2%
In the familiar W3Schools stats it took Vista six months to grow from a 2% to 4% market share.
Linux five years.
If i had to talk about the steaming pile of crap that is vista all the time i would quit to. Or shoot myself in the head.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
The readers found Harry Potter, not the other way around.
"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" first appeared in a hardcover edition of 500 copies, most of which went to purchases by public libraries. Early Harry Potter edition fetches $40,000
Its presentation on the retail bookshelf hobbled by one of the most god-awful cover illustrations known to man.
the tar and feathers wasn't a fashion statement?
... This allowed Microsoft to hire and keep some really talented coders and code managers... My guess is that the kind of coders that used to put in their 7 years at MS are now headed elsewhere, such as Google. And without that steady supply of top tier talent, MS can't innovate quickly. I have never applied for a job with Microsoft because I never thought I was good enough. Now that I hear that quality candidates are avoiding Microsoft for smaller fish, I am thinking about talking to a Microsoft recruiter. Since my coding skills are rather mediocre, I feel that I will now be a good fit as a Microsoft programmer. I'm certainly "Vista Capable" in terms of the quality of my coding skills.I only hope I can get a job here in Canada so that I don't have to go through the hassles of applying for a Visa to work in the US or India (where most Microsoft jobs are located).
Is it Microsoft that has the trouble shipping large products or is it just Windows? I work as a developer at Microsoft on Office, which while smaller than Windows is still a massive product compared to most commercial software. Both Windows and Office have grown larger in lines of code, features and team size over the years. Both have suffered from the attrition of Microsoft millionaires with the flattening of the stock price and elimination of stock options. Yet Office has managed to ship more or less on time for many releases now while Windows has basically skipped an entire release. Remember, Vista (well, Longhorn) was supposed to be released at the same time as Office 2003, but it ended up being released with Office 2007. If you talk to anybody who has worked in both the Windows org and the Office org, they'll tell you that Vista's failure has a lot to do with team culture and development process. Many years ago, Office's culture underwent substantial change when upper management decided that products like Word and Excel would be developed on the same schedule (before 1990 or so the latest version of each was just shrinkwrapped into one package) and eventually that they would contain shared code (i.e., the introduction of MSO.DLL in Office 95). Processes were developed for shipping well-integrated, feature complete software on time because it simply wasn't possible for each application team to just do its own thing anymore. That abrupt change never happened in Windows. Instead, the product and team just grew larger and larger in an organic fashion. The old ways of development that worked with a small, motivated team on a relatively smaller project began to break down when used with a larger team on a larger project. A critical mass was reached with Vista where these processes just failed. This is exactly the reason Steven Sinofsky was moved from leading Office to leading Windows as both products were finishing their last versions. Executive leadership hopes Sinofsky can crack the skulls necessary to bring the Office development culture over to Windows. I'm sure it's not been easy for him, but it's something that has to be done if Windows 7 (note that numeric code names are an Office thing instead of the traditional city/ski resort based code names of Windows' recent past) is to ship on time.
"Microsoft was (more or less) able to build some really huge software projects in a few years. Such as WinNT/Win2000 and the Office suite."
Windows NT started development in 1989. There was more than a few years between then and Windows 2000's release.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/03/03/tim-cook-apple-has-passed-dell-to-the-head-of-the-class
It would seem from THIS story, students in the U.S. are definitely warming up to Mac purchases, contrary to your experience in Europe.
When companies start renting bloggers to do product promos, it's pretty obvious.
.....and anything seen on a late-night infomercial.
The biggest red flags for a grossly over-hyped or down-reigh bogus product is when people or companies start derscibing a product with words like:
"Paradigm shift"
"Revolutionary"
"Breakthrough"
"Cutting edge"
"Sweeping the nation"
"As seen on T.V."
"Endorsed by (insert celebrity)"
"Patented"
"Patent-pending"
"As seen in (insert magazine)"
"Space Age"
"("customer" testimony dripping with praise)"
"Technology"
"All new"
"Natural"
"Regrows hair"
"Pill that enlarges penis"
Hiring bloggers to promote products is the same thing as hiring doctors to endorse products. It's down and out SLIMY. First of all, any "doctor" who explicitly endorses things should have their license permenently revoked and barred from ever practicing medicine (if not publicly beaten). Bloggers do not need certification, so determining their credibility is more difficult, as they appear to be your everyday Average Joe. That is what makes blogs-for-rent schemes so slimy: They get everyday people to promote, usually bad, products for money, rather than getting them to promote them because thy actually work (Companies are all to happy to belive a bad product of theirs "works" and that "we will want it")
Some laws require that companies say if they have paid the individual to endorse their products. Usually, it is in very small, illegible print at the very bottom of the TV screen. I know if they had to do it for bloggers, they would find a million ways around it.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Nothing to see here. Throwing in a towel is nothing like throwing a chair.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
I guess this puts more pressure on their Web 1.0 talent.
Here's a /. article about Microsoft's dropping brand ranking:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/28/1555219
Microsoft hired a former Iraqi Information Minister as its new Vista blogger.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Also, Web 2.0? wtf is that about? Didn't that buzzword die like two years ago? Is this publication for real?
In a related story that is CLEARLY just as news worth. A janitor at Microsoft has resigned.
_________
Ever notice how Microsoft fans do not feel the need to bash Apple ever chance they get? Think about it.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
now there's an oxymoron for a new generation: web 2.0 talent
Salut,
Jacques
I call BS. Microsoft has no business competing with Google in the first place. Microsoft software sucks because the company has become so bloated and the bureaucracy is so big that it's impossible to do anything innovative. Microsoft should focus on what made it such a success in the first place. Operating systems, it's suite of server software and Office on the desktop. Vista is a fucking disaster of epic proportions.
If Microsoft stopped trying to compete with every big tech company out there, eliminated the bureaucracy and spent all of that cash on R&D for the core software that it sells, it might actually be able to produce a half way decent operating system.