Microsoft’s Real Problem: Facebook is the New Outlook, and- not Listening to Generation Y
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Am I missing something?
- Email: communicating with people
- Email attachments: sharing files
- Address Book: storing contact info for friends, coworkers, and acquaintances
- Calendar: keeping track of events you've promised to attend
- RSS feeds: keeping up on news that you're interested in
What're the problems that FaceBook solves?
- Messages, Wall, Notes, & Chat: communicating with people
- Photo & video sharing: sharing files
- Profiles: storing contact info for friends, classmates, and acquaintances
- Events: keeping track of events you've promised to attend
- Newsfeed & shared links: keeping up on news that you're interested in
That's why Microsoft is scared. ;-) The market is different, but the tasks are exactly the same - and as FaceBook users get older, they become the market that previously used Outlook.
Obviously some people who think Facebook is silly will always think it's silly. But for current Facebook users, I think it will only get more useful to them as they get older.
Up to a certain point in life, getting older usually means more responsibilities; jobs, kids, etc. That's less time to maintain and cultivate face to face social relationships.
I think you'll find Facebook's population is only getting older as people with limited time go online to create and maintain those relationships.
update: I bet every popular web service eventually will have enterprise-oriented version, like Yammer is to Twitter.
I think you could easily argue that Gmail and Google Calendar is nipping at the heels of Outlook, and that over time, that's going to be a substantial threat to Microsoft. But Facebook is a completely different beast, meant to facilitate a completely different type of communication.
The people who write this sort of nonsense have a fundamental misunderstanding of work/play balance. This may be because they're caught up in the hype, or maybe they don't have a social circle outside their work, I don't know. What I do know is that when I'm emailing a coworker, I don't want to be distracted by their social network, nor do I want to know all the details of my friends' work lives. There is a meaningful dichotomy there, and it's going to remain one.
Personally, I haven't replaced my work e-mail with FaceBook messages yet, or started using Events for business meetups (though there is a news.YC FaceBook group, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the news.YC meetups are on there). However, there've been times I've been called up by a college classmate, in a business context (he was doing market research for a hedge fund client), when he said "I got your number off FaceBook. It's pretty handy for that." Another friend (also at a hedge fund) told me over G!Chat that "One of my coworkers is into webstartups. Shoot him a FaceBook message and see if you'd be a good match for each other." When my cofounder quit and I was searching for a replacement, I sent one of my former coworkers a FaceBook message to see if he was interested.
I get the impression that most people my age (2-3 years out of college) don't really know what to make of social networking in a business context yet. I get a lot of panicked notes saying "My boss friended me on FaceBook. What do I do?" Some people are shutting everyone from work out of their FaceBook accounts because they really don't want their boss seeing the photos of the drunken revelry they had last night. But others are using it like an online Rolodex & e-mail client, which it's always sorta been. I think it could go either way. It's certainly not as cut-andd-dried as your incredulous reaction suggests.
My incredulity stems from the inherent contradiction in the linked article, where the author not only slams Microsoft for lacking a social component in its email, but also for not making its software simpler. An email client is very simple: it allows me to have asynchronous conversations with other people in plain text, and keeps records of what's been said. Adding a "social" element doesn't make it better, it just distracts from the simple act of communication.
I completely agree that Facebook is an invaluable way to keep in touch with people, in both personal and professional contexts. But staying in touch is a different sort of interaction than having a precise, nuanced conversation. Communication isn't homogeneous, and just because Facebook is good at one kind doesn't mean it's the perfect medium for all communication. Anyone who says differently has drunk too much kool-aid.