

Microsoft says goodbye to Windows Live brand - kefs
https://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/02/cloud-services-for-windows-8-and-windows-phone-windows-live-reimagined.aspx

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credo
In early 2005, before Microsoft announced the Windows Live brand, I was a
Principal at Microsoft (and was told to keep the branding information a secret
- not even my direct reports (senior dev leads) could be told about it)

At that time, it seemed like a big joke to me (because a lot of senior people
seemed very excited about the changes - even though it just amounted to
renaming MSN as Windows Live)

I suspect that a new crop of senior leaders at Microsoft are now talking abut
how excited they at the latest change.

~~~
jcc80
This happens at small businesses too. And, it's actually a lot sadder because
truly nobody cares. At least MS will get some blog posts about people being
confused or complaining. Small business execs who are hyped up for a re-
branding usually don't even get that.

~~~
eblume
I work in biotech and this is rampant there - our company changed names three
times before we ever had a product (or any revenue at all). These were not
small name changes, either - they _redecorated_ the entire office to the new
company colors each time.

~~~
ww520
Somebody needs to justify his paycheck.

~~~
eblume
Too true - we also had a marketing department for an entire year before we had
said product. Now I certainly understand that you need a marketing department
before the product launches - but consider that at a time when development was
in full swing (about three quarters before launch) we had two software
developers and three marketing people.

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kmfrk
_And nothing of value was lost._

Seriously, their "Messenger" software was the most emblematic of this. If
memory serves, the name of the program in chronological order is:

1\. Windows Messenger

2\. MSN Messenger

3\. Live Messenger

4\. Messenger

The constant needless iterations of the software - which was basically perfect
around MSN Messenger - made it suck so much, because they wanted to cram
social gunk into it, add toolbars, and revamp the interface for no goddamn
reason that I would willfully give it up and shun digital contact with my
friends, since I don't have a Facebook user.

This is why Windows users drink.

~~~
lucianof
Your point - that the software was at its peak when it was called MSN
Messenger - is exemplified by the fact that most people still call it MSN
Messenger. It seems even teens, who've probably never seen this brand out in
the wild still call it MSN.

~~~
kmfrk
A thing that is so serendipitously weird about the program is that it has the
best IM emoticons of any IM client of all time.

I think they since replaced the icons with some new eye sores, but it was
fascinating how the smilies in some way revolutionized the way I and others
communicated, because they really helped create a good mood and served the
purpose of disambiguation.

Smilies and emoticons aren't a gimmick, which some erroneously believe; it's
just that they have to be designed properly before they can serve a purpose.
For one, people have to _want_ them because of their design, and second, they
have to convey the user's mood unambiguously. Interet forums (AKA bulletin
boards) often live or die by them, because the worst-case scenario results in
the must insufferable atmosphere of bitter curmudgeons.

Developers at everywhere from Facebook, Skype, Google, and Tapbots don't seem
to get this and just include for them for reasons they probably don't know
themselves.

The smilies were actually a huge part of what made the older version of
Messenger great, and for more important reasons that people would think. It
was the main litmus test when I compared to competitors; _none_ of them got
it. I believe it was also fairly novel in introducing the "X is typing a
message" feature, but I could be wrong on that.

It wasn't perfect by any means; the X Messenger Plus extension became
mandatory fairly early on: <http://www.msgplus.net>.

~~~
philwelch
Whenever and wherever I possibly could, I always disabled graphical emoticons
in favor of the text-only versions. I don't know why--maybe it's the same
reason I turn off HTML email and do all of my programming and most of my
writing and notekeeping in vim in a terminal window. Suffice it to say, it's
quite weird to see someone wax poetic about the minute details of designing
one of my least favorite features. It's so strange that even though I can't
detect a bit of irony in your post, I'm still not sure whether or not this is
some kind of elaborate joke.

~~~
kmfrk
It's not. :)

Smilies are great for disambiguation, as people have some innate tendency to
assume the most negative interpretation of a comment online; look at the
culture of manufactured outrage in the U.S. over absurd interpretation of what
people say in the public space. Of course, smilies like ":D" and such are
rarely useful, and I prefer communicating in text to smilies when possible.
(My Twitter feed barely has any smilies.)

I can see why you would usually turn them off, because they are often misused
and superfluous, but text-based smilies usually serves the purpose perfectly
well.

Go to a community like Quarter to Three[1] and behold the surliest community
that has ever been suffered onto mankind. Emoticons do wonders in forum-based
(BB-based) communities to lighten the mood.

Text is very poor for conveying tone, as your response and the ensuing
conversation conveniently illustrate. Even if text weren't poor at the job,
people would lack the time and skill to wield it convincingly.

Don't get me wrong, I _hate_ smilies for the most part. I still see their
purpose, when relevant, though.

[1]: <http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/index.php>

~~~
sopooneo
If people use them, they are useful, but my feeling on smileys has always been
negative. The vast bulk of the time they are used to disambiguate a joke or
sarcasm. But telling people you are joking kills the humor anyway, so just
write plainly.

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marcusf
I must say I love the marketing focus of this announcement together with the
one last week (or so) about just having three versions of Windows 8. Feels
like a new kind of Microsoft.

~~~
MartinCron
I agree. This is what having healthy market pressure on all sides does. It
makes me (almost) want to go buy a Windows Phone 7 Phone.

~~~
bergie
I wanted to think that way as well. But scratch a bit of the surface and
you'll find the same old Microsoft, just wearing some lipstick.

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r00fus
Good riddance. It's part of the nonsense that makes Microsoft look silly -
first it's OLE, then ActiveX then .NET - yes, they're different, I know.
However the ability for competitors like Apple to a) stick to brands and b)
reuse old company brands (see iBook) when Microsoft is shedding brands like a
snake molts is part of why some folks "irrationally" avoid Microsoft.

A brand is a promise - when you shed them, you are shedding responsibility to
your customers. Microsoft has essentially been unaccountable to it's customers
while milking them using it's monopoly cash cows for over a decade. Perhaps
they're realizing this won't be the case anymore very soon.

~~~
ComputerGuru
That's a _completely_ different topic. OLE, ActiveX, .NET, MFC, WinRT -
they're all entirely different technologies and, as such, have entirely
different names. Good idea to keep creating new tech and abandoning it? Maybe
not. But it's a complete non-sequitur to compare many techs to many names for
the same tech.

~~~
georgieporgie
_OLE, ActiveX, .NET, MFC, WinRT - they're all entirely different technologies_

Not really. Initial versions of OLE were built on DDE. COM was the next
generation of OLE. ActiveX was just COM with a DispInterface (self-describing
interface to allow dynamic scripting), so named solely because of a rebranding
effort to put an X into everything. .Net was, in my opinion, a ridiculous
branding of what was essentially analogous to Win32, and it was only named
.Net to align with the Internet craze. MFC was just an app development
architecture, so as I understand it it's related in intent to WinForms.

Why was COM with a DispInterface called ActiveX, to stand alongside DirectX,
when the two had essentially nothing in common with regards to meaning or
context, yet MFC and WinForms, which seem related in intent, share absolutely
nothing in terms of branding or name?

Microsoft's rebranding efforts just confuse everyone: developers, users, and
IT.

~~~
forgotusername
And hey, Windows is just DOS with a bit of new code, and wasn't that just a
quick copy of CP/M. Really we should expect Windows 8 to have been called
Microsoft CP/M 2012, right?

Some of the names you mention are indeed related, but _branding_ and
_marketing_ are entirely different beasts, and from a marketing perspective,
it may be perfectly logical to give disparate names to tangentially related
technologies.

~~~
georgieporgie
_And hey, Windows is just DOS with a bit of new code_

If you think that the step from a command line to GUI, multitasking OS is
anything at all like cramming an 'X' or 'Live' into a bunch of disparate
technologies, then I don't know what to tell you.

Edit:

 _from a marketing perspective, it may be perfectly logical to give disparate
names to tangentially related technologies._

Please explain the logic of 'X' and 'Live'. From where I'm sitting, they're
just aliases for '1997-2003' and '2005-2010' (numbers purely guessed). It
added absolutely nothing of value for anyone, aside from the marketing team.

~~~
forgotusername
From my totally unqualified understanding of marketing, it's because it makes
people go "oooOOh" and statistically more likely to buy or even notice the
product, because they associate it somehow with fast cars and filthy sex. This
makes the "random and without value" renames vaguely sensible in a for-profit
corporation: it drives the bottom line. But hey what do I know, I'm a nerd and
have barely sold a thing my entire life.

Quitting the devil's advocate role and in support of your position, if nerds
had their way, the entirety of marketing and design would be annexed in favour
of technically aesthetic solutions (functional product names, stable UIs,
uniform web designs, ...), but sadly when speaking of the masses, buying
choices are simply _not_ driven by rationality. My ideal world will probably
never come, at least in this lifetime.

~~~
Arwill
As a developer, instead of "oooOOh" i tend to do an "oh shit" whenever i see
another MS API.

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0x0
The most interesting part here is that they seem to embrace XMPP for their MSN
service!

~~~
jacabado
They already did for some time, I am not sure if they've done in the scope of
this rebrand, it is surely an welcome addition. [1]

Don't expect that it just works with any XMPP client as it uses a proprietary
authentication mechanism "very similar to Facebook" OAUTH2.[1] More popular
clients have already integrated it.

That's why Windows devs drink.

[1] <http://blog.process-one.net/details_on_msns_xmpp_server/>

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thisisblurry
Over the years, the one thing you can almost always count on from Microsoft
when it comes to product announcements is their large and mostly useless chart
of which version is going to have which features.

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ardillamorris
Finally something to say "you go Microsoft!" - Windows Live was so DOA that
you couldn't make lemonade with it!

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Flemlord
I hope nothing happens to Windows Live Writer. It saves me lots of time when
blogging.

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webwanderings
So does that mean I no longer need to feel guilty for not using my @live.com
email account?

Microsoft you were "not live" anymore for me when you decided to bring a wall
between your Internet services and your Windows XP.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Confusion again, but hopefully for the better.

So we've gone from Hotmail, to MSN Hotmail, to Windows Live Mail, to Windows
Live Hotmail. Where now? Windows Hotmail?

~~~
Zarel
It appears to be branded "Microsoft Hotmail" or just "Hotmail" now. I think
this is an improvement.

------
adharmad
Every few years, Microsoft seems to dip its toes into single-signon for its
services.......only unable to make it work seamlessly and replacing it with
yet another solution.

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ishansharma
5 Years Later: Microsoft Says Goodbye to Microsoft Account.

I can bet this will happen.

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chj
for record, rebranding doesn't help windows mobile.

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dakrisht
Thank God!

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pippy
This was great till I got to the renaming of Outlook to "Mail app". Outlook
still has the largest market share and completely disregards HTML standards.
As someone who often has to write templates for Outlook, it's a hassle to get
it to work cross platform.

I can just imagine the conversations trying to differentiate OS X mail.app and
windows 8 Mail app now.

~~~
contextfree
The Metro style Mail app isn't Outlook, it's a Metro style version of Windows
Live Mail (which I think used to be called Outlook Express, not sure if it had
any real relation to Office Outlook but if it did they diverged long ago).
Outlook is still part of Office (and there have been no announcements about
Metro style versions of Office apps).

