Network World
Microsoft has opened an inviation-only tech preview of a cloud service that melds social with personalized search
Microsoft's Fuse Labs launched a pilot project that aggregates social media sites like Facebook and Twitter with Bing and gives the user a single interface with which to use them all. The company announced the initiative yesterday at the at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and has been receiving lots of attention for it.
I immediately fired up the URL and went to try it out, only to discover that I needed an invite before I could do so. Interestingly, when I tried the site on Firefox, nothing happened ... it let me "login" with my Windows Live ID but offered me no other information. When I fired up IE 8, I was offered the chance to ask for an invite. ... I hope that this is not "shades of things to come" in that Spindex will favor IE the way it favors Bing. I can understand Bing (after all, Google search is integrated into the Chrome browser, and if there's a way to get Chrome to use Bing it's not easy to find.) But if the cloud service itself is going to prefer one browser over another, that's another story.
Spindex is intended to not only aggregate data from select social media sites, but to let you see trending information, according to a blog post by Lili Cheng, general manager of Microsoft Fuse Labs, the research facility dedicated to social networking experiments (like Outlook Social Connector). She writes:
Not surprisingly, as Spindex is a cloud service, it is built on Azure.
Because it is integrated with Bing, Microsoft hopes to make the app more than just an aggregation page. According to the Spindex marketing page:
Microsoft is certainly not the first to attempt to build a master social media dashboard. FriendFeed is probably the best known of this type, and it supports dozens of services with no bias towards integrating one over another. There's Tweetdeck for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn. There's Diggsby, my personal favorite, as it integrates several instant messaging accounts (in my case AIM and GTalk, but it also works with Yahoo, Windows Live, others), plus integrates Facebook and LinkedIn, etc. Both of those are apps that reside on the device rather than in the browser.
Microsoft says that Spindex is different from FriendFeed as it will include a personalized, secure, search of your social media accounts. This integrated, searchable feed will be accessible from any browser.
I'm not sure if that alone is enough to make Spindex a hit, given how many other social media aggregators already exist, and how many others have tried to build a hit in this area and failed. Indeed, Spindex was reportedly code-named the "Impossible Project." Social media aggregation isn't impossible, just difficult. Microsoft's success will depend on its willingness to add the services that people really want to use (even Google Buzz?) and not the ones Microsoft wants people to use (Windows Live).
A big difference.
I immediately fired up the URL and went to try it out, only to discover that I needed an invite before I could do so. Interestingly, when I tried the site on Firefox, nothing happened ... it let me "login" with my Windows Live ID but offered me no other information. When I fired up IE 8, I was offered the chance to ask for an invite. ... I hope that this is not "shades of things to come" in that Spindex will favor IE the way it favors Bing. I can understand Bing (after all, Google search is integrated into the Chrome browser, and if there's a way to get Chrome to use Bing it's not easy to find.) But if the cloud service itself is going to prefer one browser over another, that's another story.
Spindex is intended to not only aggregate data from select social media sites, but to let you see trending information, according to a blog post by Lili Cheng, general manager of Microsoft Fuse Labs, the research facility dedicated to social networking experiments (like Outlook Social Connector). She writes:
"As you increasingly tweet, post to Facebook, and capture ideas with tools like Evernote, we want to help you get the most out of your social activity by exposing the right information, at the right time, in a way that’s meaningful. That’s the theory behind Spindex ... making it simple for you to find what’s new, see personalized trending topics, and generally make the most of the time you spend being social on the Web."
Not surprisingly, as Spindex is a cloud service, it is built on Azure.
Because it is integrated with Bing, Microsoft hopes to make the app more than just an aggregation page. According to the Spindex marketing page:
"Spindex is not just a social reader – as you browse your friends’ updates, Spindex continually suggests related content from Bing – giving you better insight into the topics and trends spinning around you."
Microsoft is certainly not the first to attempt to build a master social media dashboard. FriendFeed is probably the best known of this type, and it supports dozens of services with no bias towards integrating one over another. There's Tweetdeck for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn. There's Diggsby, my personal favorite, as it integrates several instant messaging accounts (in my case AIM and GTalk, but it also works with Yahoo, Windows Live, others), plus integrates Facebook and LinkedIn, etc. Both of those are apps that reside on the device rather than in the browser.
Microsoft says that Spindex is different from FriendFeed as it will include a personalized, secure, search of your social media accounts. This integrated, searchable feed will be accessible from any browser.
I'm not sure if that alone is enough to make Spindex a hit, given how many other social media aggregators already exist, and how many others have tried to build a hit in this area and failed. Indeed, Spindex was reportedly code-named the "Impossible Project." Social media aggregation isn't impossible, just difficult. Microsoft's success will depend on its willingness to add the services that people really want to use (even Google Buzz?) and not the ones Microsoft wants people to use (Windows Live).
A big difference.
