Comment Feed for MSNFOUND is so sad... (Coffeehouse on Channel 9)

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

Cider — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 01:07:30 GMT

The thing is, after playing about on MSN Found just for a laugh, I see what they are trying to do. The site itself isn't the important part. What's important are the links.

I see their idea as this: a person visits the site, clicks on a video and it links to a "found" page. This, as the plan goes, is a "cool" thing. Person watches it and at end of video, it links to another link and on and on (I wasn't interested enough to go past the first couple of links!).

The viral part comes in with if said person then tells friend(s), "you should have seen this great link I've found". Friend(s) ask where it is and what do they say? "I saw it on msnfound" or "go to msn's search engine and type..." (I'm presuming these links are not on Google!). Either way, that's good for MSN Search.

The problem is (a) the initial page features excruciatingly annoying people which is a huge barrier and (b) the links are not really up to it (especially the link to "the beauties of Miss Jamaica" where the second image is of 3 extremely fat, oiled, naked Jamaican ladies!!!!). It could work if they got better links and get rid of the annoying actors. RSS is really not needed.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

NeoTOM — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 23:42:22 GMT

Oh yeah, and Scobleizer just featured an apology for bashing it. Mostly.

By the way, I'm still waiting...

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

scobleizer — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 23:26:15 GMT

Eagle: I like how you think.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

scobleizer — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 23:25:27 GMT

Rossj: yes. What I wrote was my personal opinion. It may not match what my employer thinks.

Keep in mind that Microsoft is like 100 separate companies operating under one roof. What those of us in one company think really has no bearing on what those of us in another company think or do.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

eagle — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 22:29:01 GMT

They could have hired some real kids to tell their stories and hook-up with other kids through blogs and vlogs.

Though it might not have been interesting for us, it could have grown into a phenomena for young teens as thousands could have join in and hooked up with comments, blogs, and vlogs. The Network effect, a community seeded by a six or seven young people blogging and vlogging.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

Rossj — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:53:48 GMT

A unified message on this would be quite useful Robert. I assume that Sean's message is the official line and your and Dare's post were just personal opinion?

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

eagle — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:35:09 GMT

MSN Lost MSN Found

“So, we’ve been reading some interesting posts lately about MSN Found. It seems that people are taking us a bit too seriously and have a not-so-accurate perception about what it’s really about. The campaign is simply meant to be an alternative way to entertain people and let them know about MSN Search. The pages aren’t supposed to be “blogs” but are character pages – this is a fictional search “opera,” told through a narrative of the characters. In essence, it is a story that lives within the engine, and will unfold over the next 12 weeks. So yes, these are actors, and this is a story – its intent is to entertain and based on the traffic we think that we are succeeding.

Regarding RSS, we originally decided against it because there are very few updates planned as the story already exists within the engine and will unravel through clues that users discover. But we hear your feedback and we’re adding RSS“.

Sean Carver, MSN PR Slime

The Fat Lady hasn't started singing in this sad opera, what a tragic wast of time and money! This campaign is destined to be remembered as an insult, a classic blunder.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

lars — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:06:34 GMT

scobleizer wrote:
MSN search blog just responded:

http://weblogs.asp.net/msnsearch/archive/2005/02/28/381787.aspx

Looks to me like they still don’t have the faintest clue what people are talking about.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

scobleizer — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 19:53:35 GMT

MSN search blog just responded:

http://weblogs.asp.net/msnsearch/archive/2005/02/28/381787.aspx

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

NeoTOM — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 02:04:32 GMT

So, wait- this POS was made by the ILB guys? WTF?

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

dcw — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 01:54:18 GMT

If you want some information on what ilovebees AND msnfound are about, you can visit www.unfiction.com and www.argn.com

On the subject on msnfound, I believe everyone has missed the point. It is a search opera.

After playing around with it, I have gained a lot of information on the 6 bloggers. I should have more when I get somer return email.

The information gathering is generated by entering search strings into msn search. OK, It may not be standard tech etiquette to return blog fragments that don't exist anywhere else in the search results, but it is a novel way to continue delivering information and promoting using msn search.

No, it doesn't use RSS. It doesn't have to, and, in fact, would miss point if it did, being much too easy to track the conversations between the bloggers.

I'm trying not to give too much away to people who want to play, but if you try to guess some search strings you"ll get much more interesting results.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

eagle — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 21:50:41 GMT

I'm still getting comments on my blog about the ILOVEBEES adventure, it did create a Buzzz, but anything about Halo 2 would have! I have a "forum" on my blog on a early Halo 2 entry with over 300 comments!

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

me — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 20:37:24 GMT

..i still have no idea what ilovebees (warning message?, design looks like some loser on geocities..) or msnfound are

guess im too old

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

eagle — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 20:33:43 GMT

At 42 Entertainment, we help our clients bring their brand and product message to consumers through immersive, entertainment-based alternative marketing campaigns.

Our aim is to carve the client's world into today's cultural landscape, so that, like Middle Earth or Hogwarts, it becomes a priority destination for the American imagination.

We tell our stories in the form of "search operas" -- narratives that spill off the page, the screen, the web, the phone--and into peoples' lives. We don't send an advertising message into the maelstrom of other competing messages: we reverse-engineer the process, so that the consumer comes looking for our campaign and our client's product. We create communities passionately committed to spending not just their money but their imaginations in the worlds we represent.

Case Study: I LOVE BEES

Like the Beast, I Love Bees was a giant multiplayer, multi-platform story, in this case immersing players in the world of the HALO2 video game in the four months leading up to the game's record-shattering launch.

While part of the narrative played out online, I Love Bees broke new ground in real-world player participation. The core of the story was a braided radio drama more than five hours long, written, performed, and recorded at the quality level of a major feature film. This story, covering the lives of six major characters leading up to the events of HALO2, was then broadcast in fragments over more than 1400 payphones, ringing in all fifty states, England, France, Australia, and New Zealand. Resourceful players created a vast community to go out into the real world and accumulate every fragment of the HALO2 story, enlisting the aid of strangers, inserting themselves into the Presidential debates, and even braving hurricanes.

More than two million players accessed ilovebees.com, leading to widespread coverage in the gaming press and beyond, including stories by the New York Times, CNN, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Wired, La Presse, the London Times, and others.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

Manip — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 20:15:08 GMT

I thought ILoveBees was an internal thing by the developers of Halo 2?

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

jonathanh — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 18:40:01 GMT

Rossj wrote:
Ah external company. Scoble gave the impression it was an internal thing ..

Well, there'd definitely be internal review of it, rubberstamping, trying to build hype around it (hence the phone call to Scoble), yadda yadda.

Interesting that they did ilovebees too! I guess you win some and you lose some...

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

lars — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 18:33:46 GMT

Come to think of it... What are they really trying to accomplish with MSNFound? Is any press good press? Now they’ve got buzz because they are so blatantly fake. Maybe that works too if you just want to draw attention to the new search engine?

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

Rossj — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 18:27:33 GMT

jonathanh wrote:
From OnlineMediaDaily:

When the MSN Search marketing blitz was being announced, an MSN executive told OnlineMediaDaily that an agency called 42 Entertainment would be creating virals to promote the search engine.

42 Entertainment declined to comment on the campaign, and referred any questions to MSN’s public relations firm. An MSN spokesperson confirmed that 42 Entertainment worked on the viral campaign, saying: “MSN works with a number of third-party companies, and 42 Entertainment has worked on this and a number of other Microsoft projects.”

It'll be, uhhhh, interesting to see if we ever use 42 Entertainment again...

Ah external company. Scoble gave the impression it was an internal thing ..

Scobleizer wrote:

Yesterday I ripped the head off of a coworker. He works in marketing on a major Microsoft product. I'm not going to identify it or him.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

Cider — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 18:17:57 GMT

That's Jordan Weisman's, former MechWarriors' coders head honcho and one of the top guys at Microsoft's Entertainment Division, company. Also behind, ilovebees...

You'll be using him again!

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

jonathanh — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 18:03:31 GMT

From OnlineMediaDaily:

When the MSN Search marketing blitz was being announced, an MSN executive told OnlineMediaDaily that an agency called 42 Entertainment would be creating virals to promote the search engine.

42 Entertainment declined to comment on the campaign, and referred any questions to MSN’s public relations firm. An MSN spokesperson confirmed that 42 Entertainment worked on the viral campaign, saying: “MSN works with a number of third-party companies, and 42 Entertainment has worked on this and a number of other Microsoft projects.”

It'll be, uhhhh, interesting to see if we ever use 42 Entertainment again...

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

eagle — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 17:11:40 GMT

At Microsoft, we're motivated and inspired every day by how our customers use our software to find creative solutions to business problems, develop breakthrough ideas, and stay connected to what's most important to them.

We run our business in much the same way, and believe our seven core business units offer the greatest potential to serve our customers in the coming decade. They include:

Windows Client, including the Microsoft® Windows® XP desktop operating system, Windows 2000, and Windows Embedded operating system.
Information Worker, including Microsoft Office, Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Visio®, Microsoft Project, and other stand-alone desktop applications.
Microsoft Business Solutions, encompassing Great Plains and Navision business process applications, and bCentral™ business services.
Server and Tools, including the Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software, software developer tools, and MSDN®.
Mobile and Embedded Devices, featuring mobile devices including the Windows Powered Pocket PC, the Mobile Explorer microbrowser, and the Windows Powered Smartphone software platform.
MSN, including the MSN® network, MSN Internet Access, MSNTV, MSN Hotmail® and other Web-based services.
Home and Entertainment, including Microsoft Xbox®, consumer hardware and software, online games, and our TV platform.

We are committed long term to the mission of helping our customers realize their full potential. Just as we constantly update and improve our products, we want to continually evolve our company to be in the best position to accelerate new technologies as they emerge and to better serve our customers.

So there are 7 Microsoft's and C9 can be found in the Server and Tools Division.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

lars — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 17:07:59 GMT

Rossj wrote:
Nah bottom line is they treat you like idiots, and they know you won't do anything about it. Patently old Microsoft, and the fact it is still up shows how much the marketers care about their customers opinion. I've said it before, there are two Microsofts and this is the one I don't like.

Well put!

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

Rossj — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 17:01:47 GMT

NeoTOM wrote:
Loadsgood wrote:They intended for this site to be for teenagers right? Well the 'cool' teenagers don't know about RSS, they couldn't care about whether it was fake or not. All the 'cool' teenagers know about (on the internet that is) is that MSN label = cool. Basically the marketers are trying to appeal to cool teenagers with 'real' people who aren't over the top old generation trying to be cool (you know, when your parents say, "Hey where having rice tonight isn't that... rad? You kids still use 'rad' don't you?". The marketers couldn't find anyone to fit the position so they just made people up. I don't know why the marketers are trying to appeal to teenagers maybe they are building something up. Maybe they're trying to show how 'cool' blogging can be.

Bottom line, they think we're idiots.

Nah bottom line is they treat you like idiots, and they know you won't do anything about it. Patently old Microsoft, and the fact it is still up shows how much the marketers care about their customers opinion. I've said it before, there are two Microsofts and this is the one I don't like.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

NeoTOM — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 15:16:55 GMT

Loadsgood wrote:
They intended for this site to be for teenagers right? Well the 'cool' teenagers don't know about RSS, they couldn't care about whether it was fake or not. All the 'cool' teenagers know about (on the internet that is) is that MSN label = cool. Basically the marketers are trying to appeal to cool teenagers with 'real' people who aren't over the top old generation trying to be cool (you know, when your parents say, "Hey where having rice tonight isn't that... rad? You kids still use 'rad' don't you?". The marketers couldn't find anyone to fit the position so they just made people up. I don't know why the marketers are trying to appeal to teenagers maybe they are building something up. Maybe they're trying to show how 'cool' blogging can be.

Bottom line, they think we're idiots.

Re: MSNFOUND is so sad...

eagle — Sun, 27 Feb 2005 14:55:38 GMT

RSS 2.0 fails to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Soon we will move beyond RSS to better XML Web Services.