Microsoft Live Maps Finally ‘Gets’ It. Sorta.

Microsoft released a new version of Virtual Earth last week, and with it came a new local.live.com.  Except get this–its now called ‘Live Search Maps’.  Let me back up.  Years ago, MS had a relatively unknown product called ‘Terraserver’, which provided aerial imagery of many different locations around the world.  This was a super nifty web based app, but it was difficult to find, and wasn’t really marketed by MS much.  They also had ‘MapPoint’ which was a standalone client side application that you had to purchase.  Now, companies like mapquest and yahoo quickly realized that users would want mapping and directions online and put products to do just that onto the web.  They werent nearly as functional as MapPoint, but they didn’t really need to be.  Users wanted to know where point B was and how to get there from point A.  Shortly thereafter, Google joined into the fray with Google Maps.  Not wanting to be left out, Microsoft started putting their own online version of maps and directions, but tried to ‘one-up’ everyone else and called it ‘Windows Live Local’.  See, the ‘flavor of the month’ branding this time around was ‘Windows Live’ — itself a miserable branding failure.  ‘Windows Live Local’ was supposed to be better because it wasn’t just maps and directions.  For instance, It had the ability to search for businesses in a certain location (which Google had as well, but knew it wasn’t oft used).   

Everyone I knew thought it was a joke that MS tried to sell the idea of Live Local, when most people just wanted maps.  Here’s what the press release says: 

Windows Live™ Local is a platform, experience and a community for capturing, connecting, sharing and visualizing information based on location. Windows Live Local extends current mapping experience into real-world immersive search, browse, navigation and discovery of local information across all devices and experiences.

I remember a big discussion about it on litebulb, and internal distribution list at Microsoft.    But, the naysayers were suppressed, and Live Local pressed on.   Many months later, I heard an ad on the radio– for ‘maps.live.com’.  I was pretty shocked that MS was finally branding their product based on the utility a customer would gain instead of the feature MS was trying to sell.  Still, though the product itself wasn’t about maps.  It was about local search.  Here is a screenshot from August 2006, courtesy of MS presspass:

 

Notice the 2 separate search boxes.  To me, this was the most disastrous part of the UI.  Numerous friends and colleagues and I would mistakenly paste addresses in that first box.  It even had the default focus.  But, if you did so, it would complain that there was nothing found for that address, at which point you’d leave and go to Google Maps or Yahoo Maps (see a pattern in these names?).  Many complaints within MS were ignored, and I mentioned it again in my Why I left Microsoft blog post.  Which brings me to today.  The latest version of Windows Live Local is now branded ‘Live Search Maps’ and looks like this:

Finally! One search box is the default!  And the word ‘Maps’ is now part of the product.  And it only took a couple years and a ton of complaints. 

The internet is giving me ADD

I just clicked on a Hacker News link to a Forbes article on VC secrets and instead of being taken to an article, I got sent to a full screen flash ad for god knows what. It took me a few seconds to see the ‘Click here to skip the welcome’ link. After clicking that, the article loaded, but with an obnoxious video ad (with sound, of course) that immediately began playing to the right. A few seconds later, another moving ad came into the page from the left until it blocked part of the article. Worst. Experience. Ever.

What the hell is the wrong with these guys!? Seriously, Forbes? Do a friggin usability study and I guarantee you will get all negative feedback. Did the product manager of this page really think that people would say, “Gee, it’s really nice that when I click on links to articles, I actually can choose a financial planner instead.” Or, “Well, after I read a sentence or two, I’d really like something to come sliding in and sit on top of the stuff I was reading.” No wonder I have ADD.

UPDATE: So, uhm, this was such an annoying experience that I left the site to write this post.  (ADD again.)  After reading the article, it isn’t very good at all.

What happened to IRC?

I had a conversation today about the lack of popularity of chat rooms and Internet Relay Chat (IRC).  Why aren’t these mediums used much anymore?  I remember that chat was one of the biggest draws of AOL.  To me, social networks are a more inefficient version of chat rooms and IRC.  I used to “hang out” in different IRC channels based on my interests.  The tactile feedback you get from joining an IRC room and seeing active conversations is unmatched by any social network ‘wall’ or ‘feed’.

The social networks of today don’t make me feel connected.  There’s no real substantive content on the various network’s homepages, and the various networks are more about connecting the people than the basis for the network itself.  In a chat room on IRC, you can go talk to real people interested in the same things, in real time.  There is a live feed–messages posted show up instantly to all.  There is private messaging, and file transfers.  Even secure private chat.

It would make a lot more sense to me to build social networking functionality on top of a platform technology like IRC.   So why isn’t IRC used for much other than piracy, open source, and justin.tv?  Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Social networks? Keep me out of the loop

Marc Andreessen wrote yesterday dismissing comparisons between Facebook and geocities. It was particularly interesting to me because I had heard this same comparison made months ago from a friend of mine. He makes 2 main points in his post

Point #1: if Geocities was basically Facebook before Facebook existed, then Yahoo today would be, basically, Facebook. Social networking services inherently have network effects due to viral growth; the big tend to get bigger (unless they commit suicide); Geocities the hypothetical ur-social network would therefore today be absolutely enormous; Yahoo owns Geocities. Yahoo, some people have pointed out recently, is not Facebook.

Uhm, what? Sorry Marc, I love your posts about entrepreneurship, career building, and great people, but this logic is simply ridiculous. The WSJ and Ballmer’s comments do NOT state that Geocities is exactly the same as Facebook and Ning, but that it represents the same basic social networking fad. Geocities got huge, fast. It was the 3rd most trafficed site on the internet in 1999. As of today, Oct 6, 2007, in the US, MySpace holds the position of 3rd according to Alexa (with Facebook sitting at #5). These sites all offer user generated content, and offer a way for people to ‘express themselves’ and connect with other people with like interests.

Andreessen’s second point details the feature lists of Geocities, Facebook, and Ning (of course, with the longest list).  To me, the feature differentiation argument isn’t very relevant either.  As Berman points out in his article

GeoCities grew popular before broadband, meaning that it would appear terribly crude to modern eyes. There was no video. It took hours to upload a photograph.

Geocities’s features were all that one could reasonably do on the internet back then, and it still got ridiculously hot and eventually fizzled out.  Friends and social graphs?  Geocities had link rings.  I applaud the success of MySpace, Facebook, and Ning, but I personally don’t think its going to be nearly as big as it is now, in a few years.  In other words, I don’t think that there is any chance that Facebook can sustain the traffic growth they’ve had in the past.  Hype breeds hype, and I still think thats largely what is currently fueling all of this social network growth.  Nobody wants to be left behind, so they all join.  But what long-term value is there in these networks?  Keeping in touch with old high school friends?  Meh.  Pictures from the crazy party last week at Leo’s house?  Meh.  I see them being used for gossiping, name-calling, popularity contests, and online dating, and those things just aren’t that important as you mature.

Royal Prestige is a Royal Ripoff

A couple of weeks ago, my fiance and  I attended a wedding expo.  She filled out the information card at the door, and a few days after the show, she got a call.  They said that she won a trip for two, airfare and hotel to a warm place for 3 days and 2 nights.  She asked if there was a catch, and they told her that she and I had to attend a 90 minute ‘cooking show’ the next week to claim the prize.  They said only 10 couples won.  After she told me, I immediately reacted that it was a scam–it’s pretty rare to get something for nothing these days.  But I didn’t receive the call, she did, and she wanted to go.  Since I like cooking, I figured it couldn’t be all that bad.

We arrive at the Seatac hotel where the meeting was being held, and there are 4 other couples there.  A charismatic guy gets friendly with everyone by calling them by name, making smalltalk, and just being an all around ‘good guy’.  I immediately realize what’s going on.  He starts talking on and on about how important health is, how you can’t put a price on it, how few things last a lifetime.  On and on.  He pulls out some worn pots and pans and a piece of steel wool.  After scrubbing the various materials, cast iron, aluminum, teflon, he performs a dramatic demonstration whereby he pours the gray metal flake liquid into a cup and asks, “Do you want to be eating this?”  An so, he goes on the talk about the lawsuits against Dupont, the inefficient heat transfer properties of stainless steel, the instructions that come with non-stick cookware.

Eventually, he tosses some carrots and chicken breast into a pot and brags that the pot can cook the chicken perfectly without water, without oil, by using the perfect temperature and his cookware.  Theres a science portion where the 9-ply patented construction and alloys are described (but not really), and on and on.   Judy and I play along because we’d just seen the exact same demonstration the day before at the Puyallup Fair.  After 2 and a half hours, finally he starts to wrap up and tells us the price.  $1995 for the 9 piece set.

This cookware probably isn’t the worst– its heavy, and probably decent at conducting heat.  But the whole premise is a scam; there was a bait and switch going on.  It won’t stop you from eating fast food.  It won’t stop you from cooking things that actually taste good and have oil and water.  It won’t even stop you from going out.  They are only selling the cookware, but they try to make you to believe you are buying a lifestyle.  Their marketing guys are brilliant.

The ‘free trip’ we were promised is, as expected, also a scam.  Airfare is NOT included, the offer is for 2 nights at select hotels, and they require a $50 “deposit” to even start the process.  How is that free?  Why would they need that?

In the end, I don’t think anyone actually bought the stuff.  Honestly, I thought asking people to fork over $2-$3k for some pots in a hotel conference room was pretty ridiculous.  I think high quality cookware and knives are valuable, but the hard-sell and dishonest marketing instantly turns me off.   Great products sell themselves.  I wish the FTC could just end these scams once and for all.  Stay away from this stuff, and the company.

I hate music, video, and social networking.

What is up with the huge number of startups revolving around video, music, and social networking (or all 3)? I was checking out the TechCrunch 40 and the TechCrunch 40 Demo Pit and there are very few that don’t have anything to do with those categories. In addition, most entrepreneurs I’ve met at some recent Seattle startup events put on by seattletechstartups and npost seem to be on the bandwagon as well. Why? Are the multitude of VC funded startups in these segments and the recent successes of YouTube, iLike, and Facebook proving that there’s a lot of opportunity still left in these areas? Or is this like the tulip craze and the last ones holding the bag get screwed? Either way, it just seems ridiculous the resources, time, and money spent focusing on them.

What happened to businesses whose goals were efficiency, information, and cost savings? Does anyone who matters still care about these things? Did we really solve all of those problems and now just want to find ‘new’ ways to replace our TV’s, radios and real-life friends with their internet equivalents?