Leveraging the 300M+ active users and the largest messaging platform around.
So I finally caved and decided to try out the always on instant status craze. Now I pretty much update my Live Messenger PSM all the time, especially when my Now Playing is turned on. However, I used to only update Facebook once in a while. Never updated MySpace. That was it, I didn’t (and still don’t really) care about any of the other sites, which frankly seem like a fad.
Like I said, I caved, logged into my Twitter account that I apparently opened a year ago, set it up so that Facebook and Twitter would communicate. Then I added the Messenger application to Facebook so those two could talk. I then updated my status in the Live Messenger dogfood, saw it updated Facebook and was amused, but looking at Twitter… saw nothing. How very lame.
Then I remembered reading this article on TechCrunch:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/31/pingfm-centralizes-status-updates-but-is-it-enough/
Hoping that maybe, possibly, someone would’ve managed to have the services in place to spread a status message across all services regardless of origin. This concept while simple and something that has been touted as the future for some time still eludes us… None the less within 30 seconds I was registered at HelloTxt, yet another website with yet another login to manage.
I then gave my login details to the 4 other social services that I have accounts with. This seems odd considering how much phishing is going on. Heck I bet there’s a lot of money and data to be had if someone were to create a cute Web 2.0 site that gathered account data like HelloTxt does then just sell it to the highest bidder.
After some additional reading and browsing I found this blog which discusses differences between HelloTxt and Ping.fm:
http://masontechbeat.blogspot.com/2008/07/title-fight-pingfm-vs-hellotxt.html
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for this reinvigorated interest in the web, if anything it seems geek is now chic, can’t go wrong there. But seriously? How on Earth do the 21 networks that HelloTxt communicates with manage to attract and keep users using their services? What value do any of them really have or add? Where’s all this VC coming from and can I have some please?
Now the point of all this is that it seems like there’s a lot of cool stuff going on, but the key issue to really making everything work is a central service for which all services communicate. There’s no central standard like RSS to make it all take off. In my mind all it’s going to take is Google, Yahoo, Facebook, or whoever to release a true framework that will be the platform for future services to grow. Google seems like the obvious candidate here with their ad platform and fingers dipped into everything you can think of.
It would seem like now is the prime time to make a move leverage the hundreds of millions of Live Hotmail and Messenger users and create an open platform for these Personal Status Message(PSM) sites to communicate. I’m sure that most people already have a Live ID so that won’t even be a major caveat. I tried finding a plugin for HelloTxt or Twitter for Messenger, the best I could find was this:
http://www.msgplus.com/scripts/search/?q=twitter
Sadly this will only update Twitter and since HelloTxt doesn’t seem to pull from Twitter the rest of the sites I’m on won’t get updated. FAIL.
If Microsoft has 300 million active Live Messenger users there must be at least half a billion or more PSM’s set every day. I’m going to guess if Microsoft had the open platform it would get used. Update your status on Windows Live, have it updated everywhere. Simple concept. This seems like a much better use of resources than changing bitmaps, adding more winks, and confusing users with design changes. Microsoft has Live Spaces, Live Messenger, and Live Mobile, what more is needed? Not to mention the close ties with Facebook. That’s a pretty fine start imho. Get tied to Twitter build some momentum and you’ve got the workings for real added value to Windows Live.
Now considering my PSM in Live Messenger doesn’t update my status on Zune or Xbox despite using the same Live ID. I’m just a little nervous that Microsoft may be latecomer to the conversation it should have started. Are there any conversations going on like this in Windows Live right now?
We shall see…
Tags: Ideas, Internet, Microsoft, Rants
