...when I tell him this

...when I tell him this frightens me.

Mr Gates made a point of dwelling on blogs and said that
although they started in the technical community and have come to be a
broader social phenomenon, businesses can use them too. They had
advantages over more traditional ways of keeping in touch such as
e-mail and websites, he said. E-mail messages could be too imposing or
miss out key people who should be included, said Mr Gates. Websites
were a problem too, he added, because they demand that people visit
them regularly to find out if anything has changed and require regular
updating to avoid going stale. These problems could be solved, said Mr
Gates, by using blogs and Real Simple Syndication (RSS), that lets
people know when a favourite journal is updated. "What blogging and
these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to
communicate," he said. "The ultimate idea is that you should get the
information you want when you want it." {...}Microsoft currently does
not make any individual blogging tools but it is widely expected to
move into this space soon. If it does the move would pitch it into even
sharper competition with Google and others such as AOL.

I don't want Microsquash in this market. I really, really, really
don't. Gates has a habit of throwing money around to gain access to the
pie du jour for his sticky fingers. I don't want him goofing up the
blogging market with his gobs of cash. For months now, I've been
bitching about Blogger. It's a pretty low-tech excursion---or at least
it used to be. But all that's changed in the last two weeks. I adore
Blogger now that they've done the upgrade. I now have permalinks. I
have comments. I have a nifty template, but most of all, I have free
hosting. Blogger is free because they're ad-revenue based. Now I read I
get free photo hosting as
well. I have no idea how long Google's munificence is going to
last---I'm assuming that at some point in time they'll start charging
for all of this stuff, but right now I'm taking it while I can. But if
nerdboy wants into this market, well, that changes things. The husband,
Mr. IT Strategy, tells me this is nothing to worry about. That anything
Microsquash comes up with will mainly be for business apps, and they'll
eventually lose money because other services---Google---are offering
this service for free. He says that I should look at the history of
IM'ing to see what will ultimately happen with blogs. I dunno. What
happens in the meantime and what sort of turmoil will the rest of us
have to suffer through because nerdboy wants to rule the world? {hat
tip: Adam Curry}

Posted by: Kathy at 11:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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