If you hurry you may be able to get on the private Beta of
It’s a social network tool that let’s you stay connected with family and friends
Go sign up.
This week the Microsoft Learning career express bus kicks off its Tech-Ed bound bus tour in Atlanta on Friday, May 1. Join them (and me) at some of these key events, I think there will even be prizes!
For the full event schedule of the bus along all of their tour stops, check out their blog at http://blogs.technet.com/mslcommunityPosted: Monday, April 27, 2009 11:28 AM by glengordon
Facebook and Twitter will fail as independent ventures. I love both (I have accounts on both. See my sidebar) but they will go the way of acquisition by a major player this year ( I am not stating that it will be Microsoft). They will be acquired not because of their occasional outages, interface frustrations or mainstream adoption demand on their servers.
Facebook and Twitter will fail because of simple economics. In particular, the failure of Web 2.0 monetization models that violate simple economic principles.
The standard playbook in Web 2.0 economics is to give away a kool service for free to ramp up the eyeballs and then figure out how to make money from advertisers. The principle being: “get the users and money will come”. This is a dangerous game that venture capitalists who fund these ventures play that ultimately leads to the dreaded “cashflow” problems.
How much is twitter worth?
What is monthly Twitter access worth to you? How much will you pay per month? If you had to pay $10 a month would you do it? What about $50? How many users would twitter have if it charged $5 month?
How do you value Facebook?
This is why Facebook is having such a hard time with its “valuation”. Without the decision by a consumer to pay (thus determining its value), it becomes very difficult to determine its market worth. So you are left with is an advertising perspective, based on eyeballs, to determine value.
Advertising is a volume game. The more eyeballs, the greater the worth. However advertising is a discount pricing model. The more ads you buy the less you pay per eyeball (even though the overall cost of the ads may be more). So advertising has diminishing revenue returns per eyeball. All the while your expenses per eyeball increases (not linearly but it increases none the less.) due to more resources (employees, R&D, servers etc..) It not the best way to build a business model.
A simplified equation for service businesses:
revenue\user – expense\user = profit or loss (for most it is big losses)
Well, you may say, what about Google?
Google’s Adsense is an advertising platform. They don’t just make money from their search engine users. They make money from everyone that uses Adsense too. It’s not the same model. But even Google is feeling the effects because part of their model is ad based. How much revenue would Google make solely from it’s search engine searches?
How per month would you pay for Twitter? Facebook?
… you better figure out your IM technology strategy.
I am seeing many ISVs trying to prepare for the new generation of users entering the workforce. Generation Y (more about them in future posts) are internet savvy in greater numbers than their Gen X (that’s me) and the baby boomers forbearers and are completely immersed in social networking interfaces.
Have you defined your enterprise software UX strategy for Gen Y?
With Microsoft Communication Server 2007 you can quickly integrate IM features into your application on the desktop or on the web.
You can download the SDK here.
You get to the team blog here.
You can dial the 180 day trial here.
Go get it: http://www.silverlight.net
Tim Sneath created a detailed hands on lab to get you started.
Go get it and have some fun.
Silverlight Word 2007 document viewer on the Web. Kool
TextGlow
Can't go to Mix? It's sold out. But
Watch the MIX08 keynotes streamed live real time over the internet on Wednesday, March 5th 9:30 AM - 12:00PM Pacific Time and Thursday, March 6th 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Pacific Time by clicking on one of the following three streams: 750kbps, 300kbps, 100kbps. View MIX08 sessions posted 24 hours after they happen at the conference. Take a class at MIX University Subscribe to MIX RSS Feed 
MIX08 Conference - March 5-7, 2008
I consult for MS customers for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
You can find out our plans for Silverlight and SharePoint.
Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint
Go check out what is happening!
Heroes Happen Here
Scott G. the man, posts about Silverlight 2.0.
I have talked about Tafiti before, but I don't think I have let you know that the source code is available at CodePlex. You can download the source here.
No Express editions here. We're talking Professional versions. Know a student? Are you a student? Go find out more about DeamSpark
Microsoft DreamSpark
Nice new look and feel of the Silverlight Home page. Go take a look.
Quality code up on CodePlex called Video.Show.
Here is the description of what you get:
Designed to get you up and running quickly with minimal setup and configuration All video is hosted at Silverlight Streaming, which gives you 4GB storage and 700 Kbps bandwidth via Microsoft's worldwide Content Delivery Network Comments are time-based and are synchronized with video playback Demonstrates a data layer built using Linq To Sql Broad media format support (avi,mp4,asf,mpeg,dvr-ms,mpg,m2v,ts,m4v,vob,mov, and wmv) via Expression Encoder Leverages the AJAX Control Toolkit to add animations and interactivity Encoding properties are configurable via standard Expression Encoder job file Cross broswer (IE 6 and 7, Firefox 2, and Safari 3) Open source and designed with a webservice architecture 
Video.Show - Home
