Poor Marketing of Windows Vista

The real tragedy of Windows Vista, especially after service pack 1, is that it’s not as bad as its reputation. But Microsoft did not do enough in 2008 to let people know that. It got caught in the crosshairs of bad Vista perceptions and unrelenting anti-Vista marketing from Apple.

But bad perceptions don’t appear out of nowhere. Compatibility and performance issues plagued Vista from the start. It was a vastly different OS from Windows XP and there were major changes to security features and the graphics system that created usability problems. These changes may have been necessary, but adapting to them led to chaos.

Letting the Apple Momentum Build

For most of 2008, Apple relentlessly lampooned Microsoft in its ubiquitous “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” TV commercials. The ads were often funny and effective in pointing out Vista’s flaws in ways that everyday people could understand.

America waited for a response from Microsoft … and waited … and waited.

Microsoft rebounded fairly quickly with the “I’m a PC/Life Without Walls” ads that included celebrities and everyday people from around the world talking about how they are proud PC users. It was a much more effective ad about how PCs connect people and cultures.

But it may have been too little too late. The ad, though earnest and inspirational, did not mention Vista. Apple seized on this with a clever commercial about how Microsoft is pouring money into advertising rather than fixing Vista. Again, Vista was Microsoft’s Achilles’ Heel.

Failed Bid for Yahoo

Microsoft’s efforts to buy all or some of Yahoo dominated the headlines for most of 2008. Ultimately, nothing concrete came out of it (not yet at least), but there was no shortage of drama. And the drama should continue into 2009: the latest speculation is that Microsoft is lining up to buy Yahoo’s search business.

The saga began in February when the software giant offered $44.6 billion for Yahoo so Microsoft could beef up its struggling online search and advertising portfolio.

Criticism arose that Microsoft was not up to the task of integrating both the technology and the culture of Yahoo into the more corporate, proprietary world of Redmond.

And then a funny thing happened: Yahoo said no. It rejected the 44.6 billion offer. Most people were expecting Microsoft to either do a hostile takeover or purchase part of Yahoo. But then another funny thing happened: Microsoft dropped the bid entirely and walked away. It was around this time that the economy and Yahoo’s stock price went downhill.

Google outlined its Google Friend Connect, a service that promises to insert social features into any application and any site.

Sound familiar? It is. MySpace has its friend connect service and Facebook has its version.

Add it up and you have a good old fashioned ground war over this question: Is social networking a feature or a destination site? For Facebook, the answer so far is that latter–of course it would love you to carry it around to other sites. Simply put, everyone wants to be the suitcase that carries your social graph.

According to google:

Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social — and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.

The tug of war is over control and the ground war is just beginning. Who controls these friend repositories? Even in an age of open data there will be aggregation winners. If Google’s OpenSocial gang disperses these networks then Facebook has issues. If Facebook succeeds with its walled garden approach, it stays a winner. Google’s plan: Adopt social standards and APIs from everywhere to let folks connect. The potential for Google: Be the friend aggregator.

Lump in ad revenue and it’s highly likely that Google will get a few sites to go along with Google Friend Connect.

And let’s not forget Yahoo. Even, Yahoo launched its Open Strategy with plans to infuse social networking throughout its sites. The message: Social networking is a feature not a destination.