On medissembly.com, I've published the first in a series of posts on how Microsoft has embraced social media and social influence marketing with the re-launch of WindowsLive.com.  I spent he last 10 months working on that site and the strategy behind it.  I admit I'm biased, but I believe Microsoft has set the standard among its competitors for social influence marketing. 

For the greater part of my 15-year career I have worked with large interactive marketing agencies, building high profile solutions for online marketing, e-commerce, and Internet-based businesses.  I started with US Web (formerly Ensemble Systems, later marchFIRST) and, until recently, have been with Avenue A | Razorfish.  These, and similar, agencies focus on Fortune 1000 clients that are able to fund large projects at high rates.  With substantial project funding, they can produce outstanding and sometimes groundbreaking solutions.  I have had tremendous opportunities creating industry-leading web sites and Internet solutions for companies like Microsoft, Dell, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, ServiceMaster, JC Penney, and many others. 

However, in my heart, I am an entrepreneur.  I grew up in a family of small business owners.  I have a true passion for the environment, challenges, and opportunities that are unique to new ventures and small businesses.  Consulting has been rewarding because driving projects through the process of defining a vision, forming a strategy, designing a solution, and creating and executing a plan has many similarities to entrepreneurial business ventures.  But, ultimately, these high-value, high-dollar services are only accessible to large enterprises.  The services are worth the price they charge.  I will continue to recommend Avenue A | Razorfish to large businesses.  But, along with other big agencies, they are priced out of reach of most small businesses and new ventures.  

I'm starting Mediassembly to provide digital, interactive, and social media insight and strategic services to small and medium sized businesses.  I hope to leverage my experience to bring some of the strategic thinking and services provided by big interactive marketing agencies within reach of startups and SMBs, as well as provide insight, resources and solutions that are uniquely suited for smaller businesses. 

Mediassembly is actually a company I formed several years ago while developing a digital media-related consumer software product in my very limited spare time.  The name is derived from media + assembly.  With assembly defined as "a set of pieces that work together in unison as a mechanism or device", I think the Mediassembly name is still appropriate.  Successful interactive marketing strategies require engaging customers through multiple channels and assembling solutions with a wide array of technologies.  So I'll stick with the name and expand the original vision.

I will continue blogging on this site, but will likely blog more frequently about Mediassembly-relevant topics at www.mediassembly.com.  I encourage you to follow me there, and to share the site with any small/medium business leaders you may know.  As a startup small business owner myself, I would very much appreciate the referrals! :-)

With Microsoft's recent bid to acquire Yahoo!, there will be a plethora of Internet doomsday concerns.  Those are to be expected.  But there is at least one aspect of the deal that intrigues me... integration of their respective social media products and perspectives. 

User frustration in navigating between the wide array of social media sites has resulted in a new product category some say will be the killer applications of 2008:  Tools for Managing Multiple Social Networks.  There certainly is a need for such products today.  However, that category should have a relatively short life-span, as it addresses problems that should be eliminated. 

Many industry experts consider social media to be the defining element of "Web 2.0".  I believe that to be true.  But the current state of social media platforms reminds me of the AOL and CompuServe heydays.  Ultimately, the closed, proprietary nature of those networks conflicted with the open nature of the Internet - which led to the failure of those platforms.  I expect the same will happen to the current batch of social media networks if they don't open the platforms for integration. The good news is there is evidence of this realization by Yahoo! and Microsoft, and many of the other players. 

Yahoo! recently launched support for Open ID, which provides users with a single digital identity that can be used across multiple, unrelated sites.  Microsoft has a similar but proprietary solution with Live ID.  Microsoft representatives have told me they were looking into Open ID integration, but didn't have any specific plans or timelines.  Hopefully, this merger would elevate Open ID's relevance to Microsoft and accelerate Open ID / Live ID integration. 

Microsoft recently announced it was joining DataPortability.org, which promotes standards for data portability and exchange (such as friends lists).  Plaxo, Facebook, and Google have announced support, as well.  But Yahoo! has not.  Hopefully, the Microsoft merger would elevate DataPortability.org's relevance to Yahoo!.

If the merger results in both Microsoft and Yahoo! supporting Open ID and DataPortability.org, it would be a huge win for social media integration.  This should create tremendous momentum for both movements and influence other organizations to follow suit.  People can certainly conceive of negative consequences of the deal.  But I'm a "glass is half full" kind of guy.  And there is evidence that both parties see relevance in open standards.    

Avenue A | Razorfish (my employer) held it's first-annual technical summit in Austin today.  With this event, we invite clients from around the country to spend a day with us and get our perspective on the current state and future direction of Internet and digital media technology.

The keynote speaker was Tim Bray, who is the Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems.  His speech was entitled: Understanding, Deploying, and Integrating Web 2.0.  He had several interesting comments regarding "Web 2.0 and the culture of contribution".  He provided a great quote by one of Sun's founders.  (Who's name I unfortunately don't recall.)  The quote is:

Wherever you are working, all the smartest people are somewhere else.

The point he was making is that companies should harness the power and influence of communities on the Internet, rather than try to compete with them.  He highlighted Sun's employee blogging policy.  On blogs.sun.com, you'll see:

Welcome to Blogs.sun.com! This space is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything.

That is a pretty darn open policy.  Many companies are still struggling with the idea that relinquishing control of communication is a good idea.  Microsoft has a similar policy with blogs.msdn.com.  Microsoft and Sun each have thousands of employees blogging and are thus having very active and intimate dialogs with their customers. 

Apple, on the other hand, maintains a death-grip on any sort of non-sanctioned communication.  I find that quite ironic, as the common perception is that Apple is a very customer-centric organization, while Sun and Microsoft are technology-centric.  Apple is a great company and certainly has a marketing leg-up on Microsoft right now.  Even Microsoft employees can't help but laugh at the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads.   But I expect the close relationship Microsoft is cultivating with its customers through this informal communication channel will become a strategic advantage over time.  The quote above might appropriately be rephrased as "Don't think you're smarter than your customers". 

Apple and other companies may invest heavily in focus groups to understand customer needs and behavior.  In doing so, they may feel appropriately connected with their customers.  But the quote still rings true.  Whichever customers you engage through focus groups, the most important or influential customers are likely somewhere else.  I think the point is you should leverage all available channels to understand and build relationships with your customers.  There may very well be unpleasant communication trends or threads of discussion in employee blogs.  But if they are isolated to a few, they will be lost in the crowd.  If they are not isolated, they are likely highlighting legitimate problems or opportunities that should be addressed.  That information is extremely valuable.  It is much better to hear both customer and employee complaints or pain-points and address them, than to pretend they don't exist.  Both will give you their trust and loyalty if they see that you're listening and acting on their feedback. 

While attempting to download Expression Blend SP1 and the Blend 2 December CTP, I was prompted with a dialog that said I was randomly chosen to participate in the beta for the next version of Microsoft's Download Center.  I was a little hesitant because I just wanted to get my file and move on, but I went ahead and checked it out.  I'm glad I did.

I'm always disappointed when I see a new Microsoft page or site built with Flash assets.  I don't expect Microsoft to rewrite existing assets, but if they are not willing to commit to Silverlight with new content, I don't expect anyone will.  Fortunately, Microsoft is finally making a serious commitment to Silverlight.  The home page and many secondary pages of the download center are built entirely with Silverlight. 

Looking at the home page, above, I figured Silverlight was just used for the top banner, which cycles through various products Microsoft is highlighting.  But the entire page is Silverlight.  Aside from the scrolling product highlights and the accordion menu on the top-right, there isn't much rich interaction.  Most everything else is just links.  Clicking on the Download Categories menu option pulls up the following page, also entirely Silverlight-based. 

The above opens in a separate page with a seemingly separate Silverlight app.  There is no rich transition or animation from the home page to here.  Clicking on any of the specific download links then opens the legacy HTML-based download page - again, without a rich transition.

The download center looks like a nice but fairly conservative site with some AJAX usage for asynchronous loading of the various content panels and DHTML/JavaScript for the banner and menu animations.  They could have done a lot more to demonstrate the RIA capabilities of Silverlight.  With very little rich interaction or animation, there certainly wasn't a compelling technical reason for wholesale Silverlight-based page implementations.  But there are very compelling business reasons to do it.  I'm glad to see Microsoft is finally taking serious steps to drive adoption and grow the installed user-base.  I hope this will be done with all new or updated Microsoft web properties. 

While doing some research, I came across a report titled "Windows Media Center Takes on New Life - Reforecast of the Digital Home Market" from Endpoint Technologies Associates.  It is the best Media Center market perspective I have seen in a single, free report or article. 

With the rumors of Media Center functionality going mainstream in Windows Vista, I was hopeful there would be fewer Windows editions and less hassle and confusion.  Not so.

Paul Thurrott has the scoop on the seven editions of Windows Vista.

"There will be two general categories of Windows Vista editions, which map closely to the two that exist today for XP ("Home," which comprises Starter, Home, and Media Center Editions, Pro, which includes Professional, Professional x64, and Tablet PC Editions). In Windows Vista, the two categories are Home and Business. In the Home category, Microsoft will create four product editions: Windows Vista Starter Edition, Windows Vista Home Basic Edition, Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, and Windows Vista Ultimate Edition (previously known as "Uber" Edition). In the Business category, there will are three editions: Windows Vista Small Business Edition, Windows Vista Professional Edition, and Windows Vista Enterprise Edition. In all, there are 7 product editions planned for Windows Vista."

Read the details here...

More potential good news for Mediassembly, which targets Media Center as a platform. 

From Ed Bott:

Market research firm Current Analysis says sales of Media Center PCs have skyrocketed since July 9:

For the week ending August 20, 2005, Media Center PCs accounted for 43% of all desktop personal computers sold in the U.S. retail market, based on data from a sampling of U.S. retailers.

Accounting for this phenomenon was a decline in pricing for Media Center systems, with the average price dropping below $900 for the first time ever. In addition to the more affordable price points, Microsoft has lead [sic] the charge to promote Media Center PCs at select retailers in an attempt to generate a higher level of interest for the platform.

More than 70% of the PCs sold had no TV tuner, which suggests that Media Center features are being incorporated into Windows as a basic feature.

There is also rumor that the Media Center features will be included as base functionality of Windows Vista when it is released.  It makes sense.  This is what the "Home" edition of Windows XP should have been all along - as opposed to just a stripped-down version of XP Pro.

The Diffusion Group has published a new report, which offers an optimistic outlook for networked multimedia devices.

"We've heard for the last several years of consumer interest in networking multimedia devices, but the nature of this interest was more latent than manifest," said Michael Greeson, president and principal analyst for The Diffusion Group. "While the concept of networking media devices has appealed to consumers, they were by-and-large unwilling to act on this interest. However, TDG's latest research suggests that a sizeable segment of broadband networked households are willing to act on this interest in the next six months - encouraging news to those CE vendors looking to include networking in their mid-range devices in time for the holiday season."

They address devices and CE vendors, specifically. However, I think it is a good indicator for the rest of the digital media market. Or is it just wishful thinking on my part?