Microsoft Gets A Clue From Its Kiddie Corps

from the focusing-on-the-NetGen dept

Microsoft certainly isn't known for doing a good job creating "cute" products (just think of "Clippy" the paperclip and "Microsoft Bob", the abysmal desktop "guide"). Yet, they're trying again, and this time they took a different route completely. They set up a separate office populated almost entirely by recent college grads and challenged them to come up with a product they would like to use. Only later did someone up the road at Microsoft HQ stop by to figure out how to make the idea work on Windows. The end result is "community" application for the younger "NetGen" internet generation. It's a combination instant messaging, group messaging, P2P system called threedegrees. It sounds like it's more focused on group messaging than on 1-to-1 communications. To be honest, it almost sounds like a Groove Networks for kids. I'm curious as to how such a product does. Perhaps I'm showing my age, but from the descriptions I've read, it sounds like a product with too many features for someone to simply "get" out of the box (which was my initial problem with Groove also). Maybe I need to play around with a copy before I understand the appeal (or maybe I need to be younger). Since I realize there's a question of generational divide, I'll just express my skepticism and wait until I know more about what the product really does. Update: News.com is running their own article about threedegrees as well.