Microsoft has made a lot of changes in their web services in the recent years. They have done so either by restoring or renaming them. As far as restoring is concerned, its somehow fine but renaming the services is a pathetic thing to do. I mean if you’re marketing such a service which is not up to the mark then what you should do is concentrate on improving the service instead of just renaming it. You should have something good to promote and if its not good then it’ll result in the failure just like it happened with the Microsoft web services. A number of Microsoft services have come to an end which includes Windows Live for TV, Windows Live Expo, Live Search Books and Live Search Academic. This certainly shows which direction they are heading towards.
Windows Live for TV was supposed to be a plugin for Windows Live Spaces/Messenger. A plugin which could have incorporated some enhanced features like chat and voice conversations, PC to PC calls and remote access to Windows Live Spaces all through your TV. If they could have achieved their targets, it would be such a big thing but unluckily they never got out from beta stage. The service which started in January last year is said to go down on June 24, 2008.
A program manager was quoted saying:
The project was moved to a different organization internally in the spring of last year and will most likely not come out of beta.
Windows Live Expo was more like the Craigslist for Microsoft. It is also set to join the list of failed services. The service couldn’t compete with the market, thats why they’re going down. If you log on to the Windows Live Expo page, you’ll see the following message:
Windows Live Expo will discontinue service on 31 July 2008. In preparation, the following features are no longer available:
Create new account.
Post a new listing.
Extend a listing.
Upgrade a listing to a premium listing.
Live Search Books and Academic were said to be a search engine for books and scholarly literature but it also went down. Live Search Books remained available from December 2006 till June 2008 where as Live Search Academic remained accessible from April 2006 to June 2008.
It seems that Microsoft is concentrating more on quantity rather than the quality. This is visible from the fact that they have released a wide range of new services along with branding the old ones with the “Live� image. The result is in front you, those services were to good to compete. If you wana do good online, you need to have a strong product/web service, the one which should look promising to users and attract them. The way Microsoft is performing in online services right now, it seems that they are going to discontinue more services. All we have to see now is which service to go down first. Lets hope that this won’t be the case.
Pretty useless post to me. Much of this has already been covered in many posts earlier this month.
and yes one more thing.. Shutting down of couple of services doesnt mean Windows Live is going dead.. it more means tht its getting reorganized.
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I summed up the services and gave my analysis on it so its not a useless post at all and I didn’t say that Windows Live is going dead, it would be a foolish thing to say. I’ve discussed services only, do read it again.
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No need to get emotional Taimur, he no where said Windows Live is dying, it says Windows Live Services are going dead.
And this post might be useless to you but not to rest of the world.
Every one has a different analysis and it’s good to some all that up in one post about the phase different Windows Live services are going through.
plus Dead services != reorganization, it means those services either failed/were useless/or not thought well enough.
Live Search Books and Academic surely has made Google victorious in that field of competition, period. That’s no reorganization. It was Microsoft’s “Me-too-in-every-service” attitude.
And for Windows Live for TV, they totally ruined a very useful feature most people looked forward too, so unless they really integrate it in Fiji ( as per rumors ), I wouldn’t find this to be a good step from Windows Live.
Plus, they announced it after almost a year of inactivity, certainly means that there are a lot of issues with Windows Live management and they have a lot to learn.
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Emotional? Why would i get emotional? Do i work for MS? Do I own MS?
NO.
I will maintain that killing of some of the Live services is good for Live and I called it a reorganization of Windows Live\MSN because MS has messed up their web part by dividing it into two brands.. plus after talks with Yahoo about a possible merger of online services failed, MS thought it was better to reorganize their online world by killing off unnecessary services which had too less a users and were not worth hosting it anymore. Its better to try then not to try thinking it would fail.
” Microsoft’s “Me-too-in-every-serviceâ€? attitude. ”
.. the result of this attitude is Live Writer, Live Mesh.. ^o)
Ofcoarse not all services can become a instant hit or even a hit for that matter. But its always better to try then not to..
“Plus, they announced it after almost a year of inactivity, certainly means that there are a lot of issues with Windows Live management and they have a lot to learn.”
a year of inactivity? was the product even released? to the best of my knowledge the product was only released to a selected pool of private testers which were under NDA. So i wont blame them for announcing it to the public this late as public was never supposed to get hands on it in the first place. but yes i agree thats its a shame that such a promising service never saw the light of day.
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