About a week ago, a New York Times article titled “Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter” painted a bleak picture for blogging by making pronouncements like “blogs were once the outlet of choice for people who wanted to express themselves online.” The article then goes on to suggest that Twitter and Facebook are the culprits stealing blogs’ thunder.

While some prominent bloggers came to the defense and proved these pronouncements to be inaccurate or at least misleading, there were still some thoughts in this article that really resonated with me. For instance:

“Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers.”

Yup. That’s true for me. I haven’t blogged for six months before this post, and why? Well, it takes times and effort. And the payoff is unpredictable (I characterize “payoff” as discussion and readers). Most times hardly anyone comes to say anything. And other times, it’s a ghost town.

That is, unless you blog frequently enough (and are insightful frequently enough) that you have folks stopping by regularly. But the blog equivalent of “friending” or “following” is mostly dead (it’s called RSS). So you can’t count on people to stick around or come back unless you really stick with it and/or are consistently interesting.

Compare that now to Twitter or Facebook. Neither take much time nor effort, and it’s really not hard to say something that will get read and/or start a discussion. While in the blogging world, you might track visitors and traffic, in the Facebook/Twitter world, you don’t care about that (nor can you really figure it out). It’s been replaced by even better gratification in the form of “retweets” or “likes” plus replies/comments.

This probably comes across cynically, in the sense that I’m suggesting indirectly that blogging/Facebook/Twitter are all done primarily for self-gratification purposes. There’s probably a better way to say that, but connecting/interacting/sharing with others is something most humans enjoy immensely. And Facebook & Twitter make it so easy! Whereas blogging…

Perhaps the conversations don’t run as deep or the discussions aren’t as stimulating, but Twitter and Facebook have a certain “good enough” feel to them. Let me put it this way:

If I told you that you can get in really good shape by walking and that you’d notice results on day one, you’d totally do it, right? But then if I told you, you know what, you might be able to get into slightly better shape (than the first option) if you exercise regularly. But you won’t notice results for at least two months.

Which would you choose?

I think most would (and will continue) to choose walking if it means most of the payoff but none of the hassle / hard work. (Incidentally, I think we’d all love it if only short walks really did get us most of the payoff of regular, more intense exercise.)

By the way, I’m back and ready to blog more (well, at least, more than every six months).

A couple weeks ago, my wife and I were on a road trip through northern California when we decided to stop for lunch in a little town named Eureka. I couldn’t help but notice (and overhear) a few grandmas sitting in a booth across the way. They were very engaged in a lively conversation about sharing photos with daughters/grandkids.

One in particular was explaining how she preferred to use Facebook over MySpace because of her preference for how picture sharing works on Facebook. But then, one of the other grandmas interrupted and asked: “What’s MySpace?” Good question, I thought to myself, what is MySpace?

I haven’t been to MySpace in months (years?). I didn’t even join MySpace until after Facebook and Twitter. My main reason for joining was to see what I was missing. As it turns out, not much. I was first annoyed by how they sent my password over email followed shortly thereafter by my first friend request being spam. But then, just browsing profiles made me dizzy.

So what is MySpace again? The logo I’m using in this post (which I captured circa 2008) says “a place for friends”, though they’ve since dropped that apparently. I thought, then, what better place to figure out what MySpace is than MySpace itself. They’ve got to have an about page, right? Not that I could find. The closest thing to an about page seems to be only available after you click “Sign Up!” (something I rarely click before knowing what a website is).

When you click “Sign Up!”, you get a nice little “Why Signup for MySpace?” blurb. The first reason is in all caps and bolded with a smiley face: “It’s FREE!” You know, the most convincing argument made for why you should sign up for anything… in 1995.

The next three reasons appear to be more promising:

But back to the grandma in the restaurant. The interesting thing there was what wasn’t said. You see, she knew what Facebook was and didn’t need to ask. (That was part of the discussion prior to MySpace coming up.) But as soon as MySpace came up, she needed an explanation. And what explanation does MySpace give? See above. For a grandma who’s never used it, it probably sounds a lot like a Facebook clone.

And therein lies the problem: MySpace is now a Facebook clone for those who’ve never used anything but Facebook for social networking. What’s worse, if this crowd were ever to get as far as to actually use MySpace, I’m betting they’d be pretty disappointed. MySpace probably does have something about it that makes it different or better in some way, but I couldn’t figure it out quickly enough to mention it here.

If anyone out there wants to let me — and the rest of the Facebook-using world — know why we should use MySpace, feel free to comment below. Otherwise, let’s all wave goodbye together.

Full Disclosure: I work for Microsoft and enjoy my job. And this blog post is my opinion, not Microsoft’s.

This past week ended up being one of the most intense, yet rewarding, weeks of my career. For the past three weeks, I put my day job mostly on hold and took on the challenge of leading a team to put together a free virtual training event for Windows Phone 7 developers. We had developers in the thousands participating in four 3-hour sessions that covered the ins and outs of developing applications and games for Windows Phone 7.

(FYI- If you’re a developer and missed it, don’t worry, the class resource page with all course materials and demos is open to all, plus recordings of the event are coming soon. Also, see below for some behind-the-scenes pictures from the studio we used to broadcast/film.)

For better or for worse, it seems that tech blogs, Wall Street, and much of my family are using the success of the “smartphone” as the current most important defining characteristic of how a given tech company is doing. Sure, Microsoft had record earnings and sold 175 million copies of Windows 7 in nine months. And sure, Xbox 360 + Xbox Live + the upcoming Kinect is the best thing to have happened to gaming in the past 10 years (speaking as a die-hard PC gamer turned console convert).

I could go on and mention several other billion dollar businesses Microsoft has built over the years, but they’re the unsexy, enterprise type that tend to bore blog readers. The real question on everyone’s mind: how will Microsoft play in the smartphone market? Well now that there’s tons of coverage on that, we’re all in wait-and-see mode. I, for one, have loved what I’ve played with and am also very encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive response we’ve gotten from developers who took our training.

So while Wall Street yawns, I continue to use a more holistic approach to measuring the success of a tech company. Not least of which starts with it being a great place to work!

Thanks to Rob Miles and Elese Moran for the pictures.

This weekend I wanted to catch up on the D8 conference, which is basically a series of who’s who in the tech industry being interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. The D8 website has dozens of 5-minute clips but offers no convenient way to watch them in one sitting. Some of us, you know, can handle watching (dare I say, want to watch) certain things more than 5 minutes at a time.

Regardless, I’ll give a go at consuming your content the way you want me to. But how’s the experience? The audio is so low that I can barely hear it even with my laptop speakers maxed out while the viewing window is small, and the same 15-second commercial plays once between clips.

Is there an easy way for me to get this on my TV? No. And, by easy, I mean direct integration with my Blu-ray player (which has Netflix/Vudu/YouTube), my Xbox (Netflix/Zune/Media Center), or my cable box. (Plugging in cables to A/V equipment every time does not fall under “easy.”)

Meanwhile, while watching Real Time with Bill Maher, he continually reminds me to check out something called “Overtime” after the show (exclusively online). Basically, when the shows ends, the cameras keep rolling and Bill Maher continues the discussion with his guests a little while longer. I’m already in front of my TV, what if I want to watch this? Can I get it via my cable box or some other integration with my TV? No and no.

One more example: The always excellent Fareed Zakaria asks his viewers “the question of the week” each week on which he used to respond/comment the following week. Nowadays he’s quick to remind us that if we want to know more about the responses to the question of the week, we have to check out the show’s website.

Great. So I have all these screens in my house (computers, phones, TVs, etc.), and I’m the captive audience many of these media outlets want to engage with. So why not make it easy for me to consume any of your content on any screen?

*Update* How could I forget The Daily Show with Jon Stewart? At least a couple times a month he has interviews run long, which means you have to watch them online all over again to see what was edited out. Why are extended Jon Stewart episodes not available on demand somehow directly on my TV?

Logan and I are at it again with another episode of our new podcast: Practically Ideal (get episode 2 here, right-click and select “Save Link As…”). This week we’re discussing progressivism (general Democrat views) vs. conservatism (general Republican views) and figuring out if/where we fit in.

We also talk about Google’s Thanksgiving present of turn-by-turn GPS directions available on all their phones as well Microsoft Bing’s latest and greatest features just released. And lastly, Logan and I discuss which movies we plan to see this holiday season. Enjoy, and thanks for listening!

*Update* Practically Ideal is now on iTunes.

It’s a slow news day (should be, it’s Sunday) and good ol’ Mini-Microsoft has taken the top spot over at Techmeme. For those unfamiliar, Mini-Microsoft is an anonymous blogger and Microsoft employee who has been calling for radical change to happen at Microsoft for years. He (she?) has been quiet since the last round of layoffs but decided to share some praise today in a post titled “Microsoft Has Turned The Corner.”

From Mini’s blog:

What has helped make the turn?

* Windows 7
* Bing
* Silverlight
* IE EU chutzpah
* …and award worthy, coherent ads that aren’t a demonstration of how best to destroy millions of dollars quickly.

This was quickly followed by a Robert Scoble tweet explaining that Microsoft will announce something cool tomorrow to be added to Mini’s list above:

Mini-Microsoft is right. Microsoft has turned a corner and tomorrow morning I’ll show you another example of how. http://ff.im/58Szj

Of course, Mini-Microsoft wouldn’t be Mini without suggesting further radical changes using unsubstantiated, oversimplified rhetoric (in this case, laying off 15,000 people is the solution). But I enjoy the perspective, and he does get it right sometimes. All things considered, it’s nice to see the complainers getting excited. That, in and of itself, is a corner turned.

*Update* Scoble reveals what he was referring to: “Microsoft’s new Office 2010 brings Office back from the dead (tons of videos)”

I know what you’re thinking: I work for Microsoft, so of course I’m going to use Bing! The truth is, though, that I’ve been using Google as my default search engine up until Bing was released two weeks ago. Previously, I just didn’t find any compelling reason to use Microsoft’s search engine(s). I like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t change habits just because he works for a company. Rather, I need to want to change a habit, if that makes sense.

That said, I’ll give most anything (specific to technology) a try at least once. So I thought I’d give Microsoft’s latest response to Google search another try for a couple weeks. This time: I’m sticking. The difference? I think Microsoft nailed it with the “vertical” search decision concept. You see, Bing is optimized for four types of searches decisions: shopping, travel, health, and local.

What I didn’t realize until now is that those four categories cover around two thirds of all my search decision queries (that’s an approximation for myself, I’m guessing the Bing team has a more accurate aggregate number that explains query breakdown). And now Bing displays those kinds of results very effectively. Here are a couple examples from my past week of searching deciding:

1. I was interested in Indian food, so I searched for “Indian Food 98004” and right away got a listing of all the Indian restaurants in my area. If I click through on one, I get a landing page that aggregates reviews, shows a “scorecard”, provides 1-click directions, and shows photos and pricing information.
2. I was looking for a particular flight, so I keyed in “Seattle to Austin” and right at the top of the list of results was the best price along with a prediction of if it’s going to rise or fall. If I click through, I get a landing page with all sorts of relevant information for booking travel.

Does this mean I’ll never use Google again? Of course not. The thing about search is that switching costs are very low. If Bing doesn’t give me what I want quickly, there’s a good chance I’ll give Google a try (just like I used to use other search engines other than Google when Google didn’t give me what I wanted quickly enough). But now that Bing shines with two thirds of my searches decisions, it’s earned the right to be my default.

According to some, Bing has Google running scared. While I’m not sure about that, I am glad to be in a position where I want to use my own company’s search engine.

Cross-posted to the Microsoft Learning blog.

Michael Arrington discusses what he thinks is a fantastic idea in his latest post “Paid Twitter Streams Are Here: Super Chirp.” So Super Chirp is this new third party service that allows Twitter users the ability to charge others for access to their direct messages (Twitter’s private messaging system). The idea is that celebrities could say their extra special stuff to people who pay for it!

Here’s what I said in a comment on the TechCrunch post:

Wait, so as we Internet users complain about the last few remaining pay walls for what we thing should be ubiquitous information… we’re now supposed to be super excited for a new pay wall just because it has something to do with Twitter?

What goes around comes around, I guess…

Mike, if it’s such a fantastic idea, why don’t you drop the ads off your site and make every 5th post something I pay for?

I kid. Your site, as cool as it is (and I mean that sincerely), doesn’t have the “get out of jail free” card that makes Twitter, well, Twitter.

But what do you think? Is this something you’d see yourself paying for?

Microsoft’s new search engine (or “decision engine” as the Bing team calls it via their Twitter profile) is now live at Bing.com. Early adopters already had a chance to preview/review Bing last week. So this launch has left bloggers coming up with more creative ways of covering the release.

Loic Le Meur (of Seesmic fame) thought the best test would be to search for himself followed by a search for sex. TechCrunch, in their infinite wisdom, followed Loic’s lead and pointed out just how cool the video preview feature of Bing is when it comes to searching/watching porn.

You see, Bing presents search results for videos as thumbnails that auto-play when you hover over them. So you can watch lots of videos (of any kind) without ever leaving Bing. Unique coverage of a great feature.

Whatever the case, it’s nice to see Microsoft getting some good press (such as this endorsement) not only with Bing but also with a half a dozen other recent releases.

*Update* Michael Arrington has a good run down of user first impressions in his post titled “Apparently Bing Is Something Of A Hit.” Also, see below for a short video introduction which covers most of Bing’s best features.

I’ve been lurking on Redfin for quite some time now. What is Redfin? It’s an online real estate company with an easy-to-use website that lets you search/filter/find real estate for sale. It also provides some cool analytics for looking at market trends. It’s nice and web2.0-like, what with custom RSS feeds and other pretty robust tools to make your real estate hunting super easy.

But that’s only part 1 of what they do. They’re also a discount brokerage firm that provides the full service you’d expect from a good agent representing you during a home purchase. The difference being that Redfin refunds you half of the buy-side real estate fee after closing. In our case, that’s going to be a check for $5,500.

We’ve been working with a Redfin agent for over a week now and have been pretty impressed. She did an excellent job representing us through the back-and-forth negotiation process as well as constantly keeping us up-to-date on which forms were needing to be signed by when, etc.

And now… we will be home owners in August! It’s hard to say how this whole ordeal might have gone down without Redfin. Oh wait, actually it’s pretty easy to say:

It would have been more difficult to find the place / compare it to market trends. It would have likely cost $5,500 more. And last but certainly not least, it would have not come with this kind of service (love the quick turnarounds with iPhone email responses during off hours).

For more info on Redfin, see TechCrunch’s extensive coverage.