Is Microsoft Uncool?
Recently, there’s been a spate of talk about Microsoft’s (in)ability to ship software and Mike Torres uses it as a jumping off point to discuss how MSN in particular can be appealing to the vocal early adopters out there.
Besides being an great example of how blogs can really create a conversation with customers, I think this is a really interesting topic of discussion. Is Microsoft an "uncool" company now? Sure, maybe it’s not as cool and exciting as Google or Yahoo these days, but there’s really a continuum when it comes to being exciting and on the cutting edge. By no means is Microsoft uncool, they’re just not as cool as the younger and web-only companies of today. They continue to develop products that hundreds of millions of people use on a daily basis. How could that not be cool??
Perhaps it’s their breadth that is the real issue: they are involved in so many aspects of our lives, in so many different ways that it’s hard to define what they do. People can talk about Google in one context: search. Microsoft on the other hand develops the Operating Systems most of us use, the daily Office apps we interact with at work, the email and web services we use, our videogame consoles and even our cell phones. Wired recently did a piece on Yahoo’s 10th birthday and suggested that a similar issue might be at the heart of why Yahoo gets less buzz than Google. If Yahoo’s too complex for people to talk about in a simple way, imagine the issue that journalists and bloggers have when it comes to describing where Microsoft plays. I suppose it’s easier to talk intelligently about something simple and to have readers understand what you’re saying than it is to thoughtfully address a complex situation… And as blogs represent more and more of the vocal measures of a company’s popularity this issue might become even worse. If anything, blogs seem to demand simple messages and quick hits. But that’s a topic for another post.. for now, I’m content to say that I think Microsoft’s still cool 
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