Microsoft’s Web Presence

By ian

I’m getting ready to head out to MIX tonight and there’s one thing I’ve been thinking about. Microsoft has invested a lot of resources into MIX, Codeplex and other areas to encourage more web developers to use their technology, but they still have a negative reputation with a lot of them. I think a lot of it has to do with bad web presence. Microsoft has done a lot of work telling developers how great their tools are, but have not done so well showing it.

There are really 2 areas where Microsoft could improve their web presence. First of all, they have some notoriously bad tutorial information. It’s been getting better recently, but it’s pretty thin compared to what’s out there for PHP. Microsoft also needs some better web apps out. Granted most of their apps are decent, but they’re usually clones of other apps.There aren’t many ASP.NET apps out there that are really innovative.

The tutorial area is the easier of the 2 problems to fix. It’s mostly just a matter of increasing the amount of information available and more importantly organizing it better. There are a few great series, like the 3 Tier Architecture series, but it’s more of a demo of .NET 2.0 features and doesn’t provide much context. Tutorials on ASP.NET AJAX can be even harder to find.

The web apps problem is a little trickier. Right now there are some solid tools from Microsoft. Most of the Windows Live stuff works well, but they aren’t any better than the stuff Google or Yahoo have made. Microsoft needs something new and innovative. Like Yahoo and AOL, their current solution is to buy various startups, but this isn’t really the best use of money.

So here’s my idea for a solution to both. Microsoft needs a web labs group; A web app think tank. Essentially the team just builds prototypes and alphas. When one idea looks promising form a team, make a public beta and start getting user feedback. A lot of ideas get started and die, but it’s more likely to result in something unique and cool. In many ways, it’s the way the web works. Dozens of new apps hit the web everyday, most of them don’t work. Rather than betting on nailing it on the first try, building a team that can rapidly create prototypes to find a good idea would be more effective.

This also helps with tutorials. If your web lab documents what they’re working on and provides tutorials for new techniques they find, there will be a steady stream of solid tutorials based on real world software problems. The information could even put into a wiki format allowing the community to contribute to the tutorials generated by the lab.

From a financial standpoint, this is a better solution too. Think about how much it costs to buyout one of these start-ups. You could run a team of 20 developers at 6 figure salaries for years for the cost of 1 web app. With an internal lab, you also have the advantage of having them work with cutting-edge technology. A startup wouldn’t risk working with .NET 3.0 right now, but an internal web lab could. This provides some cool apps on launch day rather than 3 months after.

Maybe I’ll have to bug some Microsoft people at MIX about this.