Bye-Bye Kin

The Kin, a phone from Microsoft, has only been out for two months, and Microsoft is already pulling it off the shelves. Even the downright obvious plugs for the Kin in shows like ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars couldn’t keep this phone alive. The main reason for its failure? Simple. Customers were paying the same usage fees as smart phone customers but did not receive smart phone capabilities. The Kin prided itself on being the first ever phone strictly for social media use but it came at a price no one was willing to pay.

You’ve Been Tagged

We have all received an email from Facebook saying that a friend has “tagged” you in a photo. Most of the time your reaction is to immediately jump on a computer, look at the picture, make sure you look good (and aren’t doing anything  inappropriate) and then breathe a sigh of relief when you look good enough to keep the tag or when you’ve gotten on just in time to de-tag yourself.

This process might become even more difficult when Facebook launches a face detection tool in order to decrease time people are spending tagging pictures. This new tool could be really helpful especially when you go out with a large group of people and don’t want to tag every single person in every picture. My only question for Mr. Zuckerberg is will there still be a way to de-tag?

So, the new ad takes a shot at the very successful Mac vs. PC ads and defends those of us who work on a PC as not being the nerds portrayed in the Mac ads. As my colleague Simon Ashton pointed out, compared with the Seinfeld ads, Microsoft came out looking better in the Mac ads! So very smart that they latched on to the success of the Mac campaign.

What they’ve done is given a voice to all the cool people who use a PC and through that, given a personality to the PC that is not nerdy (All the Seinfeld ad did is reinforce that, I thought). It’s people from both political parties; it’s scientists, it’s enviromentalists; it’s teachers, it’s students… You get the point. I have to say it even gave me the warm fuzzies a little. Loved the part of the people who work for both Obama and McCain.

So, two thumbs up Microsoft. Glad you heeded the negative banter and fixed your mistake.

Though I must quickly add that the whole backlash over the Seinfeld ads got so much attention that it really set this second round of ads up to be noticed. Do you think we’d be talking about this ad otherwise? I think not. Think they planned it that way? If so, I have to give them way more credit.

Why? It feels like Microsoft, despite being the resident aging geek, is making a last ditch effort to be a part of the cool crowd. Wow, the effort shows and it’s painful. Take a look at the video.

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I mean first off, Bill Gates is TERRIBLE. How stiff and awkward is he? That’s exactly what they should be trying to get away from — stiff and awkward — and all they did is magnify it here by bringing so much attention to the ad.

And poor Jerry, his stuff just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, I’m all about off-the-wall comedy, but this just misses the mark and isn’t just off the wall; it’s out of the universe completely. Hopefully, this is not Jerry’s doing, but Microsoft’s. Microsoft, in their defense, says the ad will make more sense as the campaign moves forward.

What does this have to do with Microsoft? They’re going to invent something really cool down the road? Well, enough already. Invent it now, or really gosh darn soon, or the game may be over kids.

I hate to be so hard on Microsoft and Bill Gates. He is an amazing man and it is an amazing company that took computing forward in huge ways. I just want to see them adapt and be successful, and this just ain’t the way.

What do you think?

One of these things is the image above: Photosynth. Dreamed up by Microsoft Live Labs, an arm of Microsoft whose mission it is to “advance state-of-the-art Internet technology and products,” Photosynth lets you take a group of photos and essentially “synth” (in English: paste or join) them together to create a 3-D image that allows you to sort of virtually walk through the scene.

Here’s how it works according to Microsoft:
“Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point each photo was taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos.”

So, they’re trying. Keep it up.

Secondly, they’re trying to “hip” up their image. How? Well, wonder where Jerry Seinfeld’s been since Seinfeld (besides “Bee Movie”)? It looks like he’s got a new gig: the spokesperson for Microsoft. The company is investing $300 million, according to MSNBC, in a fall ad campaign featuring the comedian.

Not sure just plugging in a seemingly “cool” person (is Seinfeld really cool anymore?) into your ads is going to solve the problem. I think it starts at home and the type of products they’re developing, but if they keep paying more attention to LiveLabs and less toward creating operating systems that don’t work, they’re on the right track at least. What do you think?

What’s that got to do with Microsoft? I found myself marveling at my iPhone and thinking, “Wow, if this is so incredible, imagine what it must be like to have an entire computer by these folks.” I mean, I’ve worked on Macs before, but it’s been years, and at the time I didn’t care for it. I remember frustratingly trying to take a disk (remember those ) out of the disk drive, but could not find a way, as there was no release on the drive (OK, Mac users you know you have to eject it on screen, maybe still do). It did not seem intuitive and I am definitely a fan of intuitive/user friendly (thus my allegiance to Facebook).

If the iPhone is anything like a Mac computer, it’s the most &@#* user-friendly piece of equipment I have yet to run across. Brilliant.

I have strong opinions here as a public relations professional. I firmly believe MySpace is the place to be right now. If you want to have a social networking presence, businesses need to have a MySpace profile and need to keep it up to date with news, photos, videos and of course by aligning yourself with other appropriate businesses and individuals as “friends.”

BUT, and this is a big but, I think Facebook is the way of the future. Facebook has a much cleaner user interface and I find it much easier and more intuitive to navigate through. I also love the functionality of the applications and groups. There are so many fun things businesses can do with the applications, not to mention starting one of their own. We do know that while MySpace is currently the leader in number of members, its growth rate of 49% over the past year is being outpaced by Facebook’s 152%. I encourage all my clients to have a presence on both.

I guess the end result remains to be seen. Maybe some new social networking site will take the world by storm!