Ignore your customers!

 How not to listen to your audience:

Microsoft remains firm on its commitment to  discontinue the sale of XP after June 30th 2008. This despite the  fact that:

1. XP enjoys a 73% market share compared to Vista's measly 15%.
   

   

2. 92% of developers aren't writing applications for Vista. 49% are still writing them for XP.
3. 165,000 people have signed a petition to keep XP around. 
4. Over 4000 people have blogged (or commented on someone else' s blog) that Vista Sucks.
   

 Clearly the market wants to see XP triumph over Vista. Yet Microsoft is operating in a bubble, seemingly oblivious to this outpouring of love for an operating system that has been market tested and tweaked over the past 6 years, and with which most non-Microsoft products are optimized to work. 

As a result, Apple's consumer market share has grown by 60% in the last year to 14%, its developer adoption is up 380% , and Linux has gained greater visibility as as Redmond alternative. 

Now, while the footprint of Windows competitors is small in comparison to Microsoft's market domination, the gap is narrowing quickly.

Where have we seen this trend before? Hint: _ozill_ Fir_f_x

 

In our opinion, Microsoft is left with two options. Listen to its customer base and feed their passion, or face continued declines as its products become less and less relevant.

What do you think?

A little off Topic - PDF Support for Google Docs

For years now our group has been using Google Docs to keep track of documents, but my one complaint has been no PDF support. While I'm not the biggest fan of Adobe, PDFs are a natural part of business.

1. Anytime a document is sent to the outside world, it is converted to PDF.
   
2. All of purchased research comes as PDF

Hunting for 3rd party solutions to support this has really limited Google Docs usefulness, until now. Yesterday Google added PDF support for Google Docs. You can now store, share and view PDFs from with their system. (The viewing application looks a lot like what is used for google patent search)

 While you can't yet edit PDFs, this is a much needed an appreciated addition to the google docs suite.

Thoughts on Pitching your Idea

In our daily routine, we hear pitches from numerous companies looking for ways to improve their pitch and overall web strategy.  

I found this comment on the NextNY discussion group, and felt that it was insightful advice. In an interview Guy Kawasaki, the founder of Garage Ventures, was asked:

Q: So with all the advice you've given on pitching VCs, have you seen
an improvement in the quality of pitches to Garage Technology
Ventures?

A: Honestly, they’re not that much better. They are still too long,
still using meaningless buzz words like “revolutionary,” and still
don’t have credible business models. If only they would adhere to the
10/20/30 rule of Powerpoint: Ten slides, twenty minutes, 30 point font.

So the moral of the story is

1. Keep your powerpoint presentation simple.
2. Make it readable form 20 ft away,  or better yet don't include much text at all.
   
3. Remove the words "revolutionary," "World Changing" and "This is going to be huge" from your vocabulary FOREVER!.
4. Stop mentioning that if you can achieve just 1% market share of an industry, you will be able to create a 100 million dollar company.
5. Be different / Be interesting / Provide Value
   

If you want to learn more about effective pitching please see Guy Kawasaki's blog post on the 10/20/30 rule

Just before we go, we leave you with a short piece on how to turn a compelling speach into utter powerpoint  boringness.

Succssful Social Objects

It looks like the band Weezer has found a way to create buzz on a massive scale by leveraging popular Youtubers as the extras in its latest video. 3.5M views in 5 days, and spreading like wilfire.

The True Power of Web Video

Branded Edutainment seems to be the most logical next step in video advertising. 

Think about it. We use products everyday. Why not create smart content  that teaches your customers how to best use your products.  Woudn't it seem to make sense that people will gravitate toward companies that try to make a personal connection with their customers?