Product Management: Is it good enough?

Having worked software development as product manager and having been a software user, I came to appreciate how many things can go wrong with releasing a product.  Also I have seen how products fail because of obvious issues.  These tend to happen more often for a brand new product launch.

There are a million things that could go wrong when making a product.  Release target may slip because of the last minute showstopper bug, documentation may not be ready in time, product may not be solving the right problem for the user and market may not materialize as anticipated.  Out of all these possible pitfalls, perhaps the most fatal mistake that product manager can make is not setting the right standard for the product quality.

I have been a PC guy... so far.

I have been a PC guy.  I all my work on my PC, yet like a lot of you, I use iPad, iPhone to consume content during my downtime.  But I'm not sure if I will go for Windows 8 devices.  That is because it's not clear to me whether it's a work machine or data consumption machine.

Here's the thing.  We all have multiple computers.  We have smartphones to connect with people on the go, we have tablets to consume content and browse the web, and we have laptops to do our work.  What I see happening with Windows 8 is mixing a tablet with a laptop user story.  To add to that, Windows 8 has introduced new UI standards that no one is used to.

Microsoft += Yammer

UPDATE 6/16/2012: According to CNET, Microsoft tablet will run Windows RT, a variant of Windows 8, that has subset of Windows 8 features available.  Check out how Windows RT is different from Windows 8 here.

It looks like Microsoft is buying Yammer for $1.2 billion according to WSJ.  This marks the third major acquisition of social networking company this year.  It follows from Oracle's acquisition of Vitrue and Salesforce's acquisition of Buddy Media.  Yammer had released SharePoint connector back in late 2010 and acquired OneDrum, Microsoft Office document collaboration tool, earlier this year.

Microsoft So.cl: search meets social

Since I found out about MSFT So.cl last week, I've been on So.cl starting Wednesday.  It had two options for login, either connecting with Facebook or Hotmail account.  I used my Hotmail account to log in and took a tour.

In a nutshell, So.cl is Bing search meeting social.  It is primarily search experience sharing tool, and it's fairly good at that.  As soon as you start searching for something on top search text area, your search keywords and the result you clicked on will be automatically posted publicly for everyone else to see.

Microsoft Fuse Labs: So.cl

Microsoft is one of the Facebook investors.  It has about $1.36 billion equity in Facebook (after today's disappointing trading, it should be less than that).  Learning from Facebook's success, it looks like Microsoft is also quietly announced that they are expanding public beta program of So.cl (it reads 'social'), their education-focused social network.  It has been doing closed beta since last year, and it's ready to test out its research project with larger audience.

Windows 8 UI design

It was quite amusing to look through past Windows UI from MSDN blog.  Here's an abbreviated tour through Windows UI history.

1985 - Windows 1:

I don't remember seeing this;
I think I was still using Apple II in 1985.

What else can $1,000,000,000 buy? 800 patents

Just as Facebook was announcing $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, there was another one billion dollar deal happening.  It was Microsoft buying 800 patents from AOL.

Microsoft announced $1.06B patent purchase from AOL;
winner is clearly AOL, but it will take more than
patent sales to turn AOL around.

Yes, Microsoft has agreed to pay $1,060,000,000 to AOL for 800 patents.  Not knowing any detail about those patent, only intelligent thing about that deal we can say is that each patent is costing Microsoft about $1,325,000.  It means there are some patents that will be worth more than that.

When you look at this deal side by side with Facebook's Instagram acquisition, it makes Instagram deal look like a bargain.  Why would Microsoft spend money to get these patents instead of acquiring growing mobile start-up like Instagram?

Windows 8: Smartphone UI for your laptop

Windows 8 consumer preview debuted yesterday at MWC Barcelona.  It's difficult to predict how users will receive the new Windows 8 UI/UX without playing around with it, but from the video clip demo it looks interesting.  One thing interesting is that Microsoft is now fully embracing gesture navigation, but doing it in such a way that it unifies smartphone, tablet and PC user experience.  This may sound familiar if you were paying attention to OS X Mountain Lion announcement a couple of weeks ago.

Touch gesture interaction is the new graphical interface.  Combined with simplified UI layout, smartphone-like interface is setting the standard for how users are expecting to interact with devices.  As a result, if you look at Windows 8, you might think that it might have come straight out of your smartphone.

It will be interesting to see how Windows 8 actually performs on laptops.  Whether it's easy to navigate and get things done, whether it's actually stable enough for business users to upgrade, and other than cool new UI what other features are available that can connect with other mobile devices running Windows 8, would be some things that I will be interested in.

At any rate, on the first glance, it certainly looks like a step in the right direction.

Microsoft Social Strategy Update

Social network market is just too big and rapidly evolving for one guy to cover. Back in September I wrote about Microsoft's social network play, and managed to leave out Outlook Social Connect (OSC) and Spindex from Microsoft Fuse Labs. Today I wanted to talk a bit about what OSC and Spindex, and other developments around Microsoft's social strategy.