How many different consumer online platforms does Microsoft have right now?

• Bing
• MSN
• Windows Live
• XBOX Live
• Zune Marketplace

That’s just a quick braindump; there are probably more, but for the purposes of my quick bout with insanity, this should suffice.  The way I see it, Microsoft is rapidly losing branding focus, and while this doesn’t sound like something that matters in this age of Web 2.name-it-whatever, it is an issue for Microsoft, and it extends beyond the world of Microsoft’s online properties.

Jump to see why I think this is becoming a problem. Yeah, it’s long, but this is one of the few times when an overly long post is justified.

Bing, MSN, and Windows Live share the same origin, which is to say, they all came from The Microsoft Network. MSN came about as a name because it used to be an ISP, though that’s in the distant online past. Later, MSN transformed into a general online content and services platform, with MSN Messenger, the MSN launch page, MSN Search, et al. finding themselves all a part of one platform.

Windows Live found its way into existence after being toyed around as “start.com” (which you’ll now notice redirects to Bing) and later coming into existence as just plain “Live” before becoming Windows Live down the road. While MSN was designed to deliver predefined content much like Yahoo’s default portal, the idea behind Live was to deliver a personalized services experience, from a customizable launch page to various user services such as Messenger. The justification for the Windows Live branding was that Windows Live as a platform was an extension of the Windows experience.

Bing was officially launched June 3, 2009. Before Bing, Microsoft’s search efforts started under MSN before progressing to Live, Windows Live, and then back to Live again in the form of “Live Search". The name itself was chosen because the guys with Kumo (the testing name for Bing) “needed a brand that was as fresh and new as [their] approach. It needed to be like the product — optimized for the Internet.” In other words, it’s yet another web 2.0 name, though thankfully, I seem to have at least been somewhat wrong about the name being a major problem.

So, the end result of this is a jumbled series of online platforms which accomplish only marginally different tasks. MSN is a generic online launch page, while Bing is Microsoft’s version of the plain search page. The customizable launch page concept is now kinda-sorta over at home.live.com, while any further-personal services and extra Windows apps from Microsoft have been tucked under the Windows Live brand name. I can see the logic, but unless Microsoft’s goal is to make some properties look like they’re from Microsoft while making others look as distant as possible while still retaining some association, this sort of fractured online presence just feels much more confusing than it needs to be.

Do you see Google squaring fundamentally similar yet differently functional apps away under vastly different names? GMail (Google Mal), Google Shopping, Google News, iGoogle, Google Google Google Google Great you get the idea. They’re all people-services, and as a result, they all share the same root name. There was a time when Google was slightly branding-confuzzled (froogle), but they’ve rightfully straightened out.

The reason for why I’m busy throwing gray matter at the wall this morning, though, is that there’s just no reason for the Windows brand to fall victim to the same fate. Once upon a time, Windows meant something. The name was directly related to the concept behind the user interface itself, and this has held steadfastly true (the exception being Windows Live, but Windows Live was meant as a tie-in for Windows users) up until Mobile World Congress this year.

Windows Phone 7 is exactly the kind of gradual brandicide that Microsoft really doesn’t need to be committing, whether it’s against Windows or against Zune. I’m inclined to see it as being the eventual downfall of the term “Windows” as a meaningful Microsoft brand for one simple reason:

Do you see any windows in the UI?

Nope. Neither do I. In fact, I see a data-centric user interface in Windows Phone 7, whereas the entire user experience in Windows (including Windows Mobile) up until now has been function/application-centric. With a UI which is so fundamentally different from the original concept of the brand itself, what’s the point of even calling it “Windows”-anything at all? There are no windows, there is no traditional window-oriented multitasking, and the entire UI is many miles away from the Windows concept. In fact, I can explain exactly where this name came from in a few simple points:

• 7 has proven to be worth something in the consumer’s mind thanks to the success of Windows 7.
• Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 sound similar
• A name close to Windows Mobile was needed so that people could associate it with its completely unrelated cousin without reminding people of the horrors of the old Windows Mobile platform, hence why it’s now Windows Phone.

That’s it. Microsoft essentially decided to take the cheap road and draw heavily from other successful brands despite simultaneously butchering the inherent meaning in the most important name in Microsoft’s history. Whether this was or wasn’t the conscious reason is beside the point; this is absolutely why the name was chosen.

Seriously, do you see any windows in that UI?

Speculation that Microsoft would release a Zune phone, in my opinion, was 100% correct. The only difference is that Microsoft decided to stay away from the Zune name in order to ensure its short-term success. The Windows Phone 7 UI is brilliant in execution, but the problem is that both the name and the UI concept are a huge risk. If Windows Phone 7’s roll-out doesn’t go as planned, if apps stay limited (Zune HD is a great example), or if  Microsoft flubs something up down the line beyond Windows Phone 7 (think Windows Phone 8), more than just that brand will be compromised. Furthermore, if Microsoft proves yet again to know what its doing with its mobile division upon the release of Windows Phone 8, 9, etc., then the brand will further dilute.

Microsoft needs to sort its branding priorities. In the online sector, I can understand the split between Windows Live and Bing, but I see no reason for MSN to be separate from either platform. It’s so closely related to both Windows Live and Bing that it can go under either as another subordinate property. On the flip side, keeping branding separate between Microsoft’s mobile and desktop properties would almost definitely be a better idea: Zune HD is a fantastic device which suffers from terrible advertising, while Windows Phone 7 is definitely not a Windows Phone at all. Zune Phone or Zune Mobile would almost definitely have been better names for the OS itself given the interface similarities (heck, just call it Zune OS. It’s not as if people don’t already know that Zune is a Microsoft mobile property anyway). Microsoft has the backing to make sure the Zune name becomes successful, but Microsoft’s marketing teams feel so compelled to keep some of their brands unnecessarily interwoven in order to ensure short-term success that they’re doing damage to the very foundation of the brands in question.

While Microsoft’s mobile product development teams did indeed have the guts to try something new and go metro, Microsoft’s mobile marketing teams seem to be unwilling to take risks (conversely, Microsoft’s online branding teams seem to be taking too many).

In short, name your similar apples apples and your similar oranges oranges, but don’t name your apples and oranges peaches.

Did I get it wrong? Drop me a line in the comments and I’ll either address your thoughts, edit accordingly, or both.

Reading through Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite Blog last week, it appears that Microsoft announced new integration of Windows Live Hotmail and Bing. While it’s fine and dandy for the two products to work together, they announced a feature that has existed since February. Heck, they even own up to it:

We announced in February that Windows Live was piloting a new feature unique to Hotmail we’re calling “quick add.”

They went on to say that they were adding Bing integration to the “quick add” feature (the currently available options for which can be seen to your right). In reality, nothing at all changed with this feature. Don’t get me wrong, this could be a very useful thing, but every single option that is there was there yesterday, and as I recall, has been for a long while. Obviously, before June it was powered by Live Search, but as far as I know, it worked for the past month too.

Apparently, there’s not much new in the Hotmail department.

Microsoft announced today a new search initiative (and yet another brand identity) for their struggling game against Google, and unfortunately, it’s not exactly the best name. Microsoft has used too many different brandings for its search initiatives within the past decade (unlike Google and Yahoo who, well, used the same name all throughout), and besides creating confusion for people, all it does is make it harder to create those mental associations Microsoft is looking for.

Once all is said and done, Bing is a search engine which aims to present more relevant information. Since this is the perpetual, never-ending goal of search engines, I can’t actually say that Bing is something new, nor can I agree with the “decision engine” marketing term because, in the end, all search engines exist to help us make decisions. Hopefully, Bing can provide better results than Google, but that completely depends on how much time and effort Microsoft invests into Bing. Given that search was the future, Microsoft might’ve been better off finding a new disruptive technology as opposed to fighting an established goliath.

Back to the name:

Long ago, Yahoo tried to get their name woven into the fabric of public literacy. Yahoo wasn’t successful for the same reason Bing won’t be successful either: they’re both ever so slightly too hard to pronounce as a verb. Here’s a good rundown of worked and what didn’t:

• Yahoo has two syllables with weak starting consonants, of which one is the confused letter Y.  It also ends in an audible vowel which, when paired with the next word in the sentence, makes pronunciation harder. Since the next word after the term would likely have been “it,” saying “yahoo it” doesn’t properly roll off the tongue.
• Kumo (the old name for Bing) doesn’t work because it ends on a vowel and has one soft consonant in the middle, deflating the word itself. The word “Kumo” makes the person saying it feel like he’s losing enthusiasm as a result of not holding some degree of assertion through the name.
• Cuil sure as hell didn’t work because no one knew how the hell to pronounce it. (It’s pronounced “cool,” unlike the name)
• Google works because both syllables start with a solid consonant, and the word itself ends in a silent (and therefore irrelevant) vowel. Larry and Sergey got lucky with the name; they were just making a play on Googol, but the end result is the same. The name itself implies an assertive action through the use of hard consonants but succeeds in avoiding aggression because it ends in a soft consonant. The consonant ending also allows the word to easily be appended to other words during pronunciation, especially the word “it.”

Bing is a different case altogether. It’s a monosyllabic word (like Cuil, but it doesn’t look as intimidating), which means the rules change a bit. One-syllable words have the advantage of being quick to pronounce and easy to remember, which also means that the word is best starting and ending with a rather solid consonant (Digg is a good example), but there are too few permutations of letters for any cool monosyllabic words starting with a good, solid consonant to be unused in this world of Web 2.LetsNameOurWebsiteAnything. The problem is that Bing actually sounds cool and usable. Unfortunately, Bing has two drawbacks which set what would otherwise be a rather successful name up for failure:

• It sounds too much like “ping.” While this won’t be a problem for lay-users who don’t know what an ICMP Echo is, it will be a problem for the more advanced users who will inevitably struggle to differentiate the pronunciation of “bing” from “ping.” The problem is that when the advanced users have to put too much effort into saying something, they will subconsciously lose motivation to spread the word, which limits the spread of the brand. This would be the biggest drawback of all since Bing is yet another tech service looking for appeal.
• It just feels analogous to ‘hit,’ ‘bang,’ ‘tap,’ and any other term which falls into that category of slang.

There aren’t really any words left with four letters ending in “ing” that haven’t been taken already, and Bing actually sounds better than what’s left. The best goal for any name is to be easy to pronounce in context while serving as a subconscious motivator to do the act to which the name is tied, which is why Google worked, and which is the only way any other name can work.

Honestly, I wish Bing the best of luck. The world knows how badly Google now needs a competitor in the search space. It’s just that Microsoft’s resources might’ve been better spent on disruption rather than throwing blunted stones at a shielded Goliath. If you want to read a full rundown of the service itself, drop by the WinSuperSite and have at it.

Like any other product, I’ll start off with the install experience. Drawing on ideas from the Wave 2 installer, this one is more refined and clean, especially since component selection has been switched from web-based cookie to the install program itself. Another good thing is the prerequisites section that tells you exactly what it will install along with the products selected.

As you install, setup billboards inform you about the benefits of Windows Live. I guess it was inevitable that these would be stuck on.

Of course there’s the obligatory screen offering you to set Live as your default everything, as well as participation in the CEIP.

Naturally at this point Messenger opened automatically. The WIC component required a restart so I did that before continuing.

Messenger

Windows Live Messenger, the flagship product of the suite, had some notable changes over even the leaked M1 build.

Some consisted of minor visual tweaks: A contact’s status have been changed from the “buddy” symbol to a series of colored squares, representing a certain state. This also ties in with the outline around the display picture, although something about it seems out of place. Also, other statuses, such as “Be right back” and “Out to lunch” are gone.

The other statuses and their display picture outlines

When mousing over a contact, a toast consisting of actions pops up. Same thing goes when mousing over your own display picture.

The contact list layout options have moved into the main options window. While this is probably necessary for the amount of options that have been added, it may be inconvenient for the fact that it may take one or two extra clicks to change the view.

Instead of a simple color changer, there is now a “Change your scene” preference window that also includes colorful backgrounds that you can apply to your Contact List window, and others who message you see your theme on their conversation window. Again, this sacrifices Fitts’ Law for more customization.

———————–>

Finally, a new “What’s New” row,  shows your contacts’ latest updates a-la-Facebook News Feed.

Mail

Windows Live Mail has gone through some changes too. The UI has been simplified a bit.

Pretty much the only notable feature added is the calendar, which syncs with Windows Live Calendar and comes with predefined holidays (country dependent). I smell a Windows Calendar replacement coming.

Photo Gallery

Along with a refreshed UI, Photo Gallery sports integration with Flickr and people tagging, along with extensibility via other plugins.

People (well, anything) tagging in action

You can link your Windows Live ID through Photo Gallery to your Flickr account. (This isn’t new, it’s just now integrated into the default install of the application)

You can now filter images by exact rating or a greater than value.

Writer

The app that I used to write part of this blog post now has integration with MSN Soapbox and YouTube to directly upload or link from existing videos.

Also not new but to clean up branding is map integration. Formerly called “Windows Live Local”, it now identifies itself as “Live Search Maps” and uses the latest version of Virtual Earth.

On a strange note, after writing part of this post with Writer, uploading it to the blog, and then attempting to download the post for editing, Windows Error Reporting threw me a message. The program didn’t crash, but for some reason the post could not be retrieved from the server. Tinfoil hat wearers are in luck: Sending a report doesn’t send you the contents of what you’re working on.

Movie Maker

I was most anxious to try this, but for some reason it wouldn’t play or let me add videos to a project (possibly due to ffdshow related issues). For this reason I just took a couple of screenshots of the UI. The ribbon works almost exactly as it does in Office 2007.

Conclusion

So that’s about it for the Wave 3 products. I didn’t try out the Toolbar or Family Safety betas since those aren’t as commonly used as the other products. Overall, things are looking up for the future of Windows Live, and pretty soon we’ll see how these products (or a forthcoming version) integrate with Windows 7.