Microsoft Plans Flickr Competitor 156
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."
Say what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this this same strategy which has brought us massive code bloat at the cost of random number security? [slashdot.org]
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.
Buzzword alert (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone Notice something ....? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google, Yahoo, Linux, Apple
Who gives a crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wants it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Predictions (Score:2, Insightful)
- 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).
Re:Say what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I'd love more competition in this field: it'd get us Flickrites more goodies from Flickr!
I will tell you why you can write MS off (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why does every new product labeled 'competitor' (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
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.
Me Too !!! (Score:2, Insightful)
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...
Re:You can select friends and or family only... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:proactive vs reactive (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand ... Someone has already mentioned PhotoTours [microsoft.com] and
GroupShot [microsoft.com] 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.
Re:You can select friends and or family only... (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.flickr.com/help/guestpass/ [flickr.com]
So much for your little conspiracy theory that Flickr intentionally isn't implementing a wanted feature in order for Yahoo to gain more accounts.