magazine: Microsoft’s Weblog Software. Fortunately, Microsoft hasn’t focused their attention on the weblog market. Pesonally, I’d rather stick with tools from small companies like UserLand if/when Microsoft tries to take over the market!
<quote>
Picture the following scenario: Microsoft has created a weblog tool that is designed to run inside the firewall at a company. It’s browser-accessible from any 4.0 or higher web browser and doesn’t require Windows on the client. It leverages their strengths by integrating with Office, and there’s no per-user client access fee. Then imagine if this weblogging tool were deployed to millions of users, all before anyone in the weblog community took notice. That scenario is real.
</quote> [Roland Tanglao’s Weblog]
I’m not so sure Microsoft entering the market would be entirely a bad thing. In order for wider corporate adoption, there needs to be much better and tighter integration with Office – the fact that no simple mechanism (that I’m aware of) exists to pull content from Outlook, Word, Excel, etc. is indicative that no concentrated effort has yet been made to go after the corporate market.
Upsides to Microsoft getting in the game? It would certainly validate the concept as a credible KM solution. Attention focused on the idea would energize the corporate development community around ways to make weblogging more efficient for enterprise-wide sharing initiatives.
Downsides? Same as any other marketing Microsoft gets into: they’ll deliver an 80% solution at a cost that will squeeze smaller providers to the margins.
If I were running a weblogging company, I’d find a way to get some big, obvious wins at a couple corporate sites. The sooner you do that, the more valuable you are as a partner than as a competitor to Redmond.
A blog is a tool for managing content -- and content is NOT going to disappear. So unless a better tool comes along, blogging is going to be here a while.
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