MSN is open for discussion

1999-09-28

Microsoft has launched its MSN online communities in the UK only a week ago. It’s still in beta but already has over 3,000 subscribers. Not bad going.

So – what’s it all about? Essentially, the online community concept has changed little since the golden days of the bulletin board ten years ago. As Microsoft themselves point out, however, this is less about technology and more about reach, as the “3,000” figure above illustrates. The main component of the MSN online community is a discussion board which may be configured by its administrator. This person, like the participants in the community needs to be signed up to the MSN Passport facility, which provides a user profile. The administrator can set up the community’s front page, can define the language, whether it is open to private or public membership, the content standard (e.g. adults only) and so on. Prospective members can be vetted, if required, following which they are open to participate by posting messages and sharing files. A handy feature is the photo album – for example, families can operate a private community where they share holiday snaps or pictures of the little ones.

This would appear a reasonably standard implementation of an online community – even with the language support (the main competition, Yahoo, is currently in English only). Typically it is what is planned that gets interesting. The main features on the horizon over the next few months are provision of a calendaring facility (so community members can fix events) and, most interestingly, integration with both online and offline tools such as Outlook Express, Microsoft Messenger and even Web site building facilities. This integration trend its to continue – for example commerce facilities are in the longer term plans and even voice integration is “on the scope”. Not bad for a free service, but where will MSN make its money? In the short term, this will be primarily through advertising and sponsorship opportunities. MSN have not been particularly profitable in the past, but apparently now the company has been setting hard sales targets to, at least, make the company pay for itself. These targets are set to rise.

So, have MSN got it right? There are no guarantees. First off, what we are seeing at the moment as something new (which it clearly is not) is likely to appear pretty primitive within a year or so. What Microsoft have worked out is the importance of an underlying framework – as the facilities evolve, they will benefit from having something solid to plug into. For MSN, this hinges around the Passport facility for individuals, but there is nothing similar for organisations unless we include Microsoft DNA. MSN has reinvented itself several times in the past, as an entertainment portal, a consumer portal and now as an infrastructure for online communities. Despite the bad press the company has received for not getting it right first time, Microsoft has little choice but to go with the flow, copy the competition and hope. The competitors – AOL/Netscape and Yahoo to name two, are already proving that Microsoft’s dominance in the desktop market doesn’t mean diddley squat in this new, vaguely defined battle for the hearts and minds of the online masses.

(First published 28 September 1999)