Microsoft's view on social media

Just back from Circle of Media, a Microsoft event for the self declared influentials of the Belgian interactive world : belgian bloggers and agency people that is... The nice people of Microsoft had prepared a line up with first hand news and demos from Silverlight, Popfly (a very sexy DIY mashup tool we already played with at Boondoggle) and the impressive Surface.

The opening presentation called "The Internet Zeitgeist" by Philippe Deltenre was however the one that caught my attention, you can find it here. After some visionary slides including references to Deleuze and Marx, Philippe reframed social media according to the Microsoft view. Based on media data that Twitter, Del.icio.us and Second Life remain niche platforms in Belgium, he made his point that Microsoft doesn't believe in virtual networks but instead focuses on real life networks (slides 16-20).

Honestly I think the discussion between "real life networks" and "virtual networks" is rather ...erm artificial. Although they aren't mass marketed in Belgium, both social bookmarking and twitter cater to my needs of real life networking. I haven't met new friends through Twitter but it provides me a non-intrusive way to keep in touch with some of my friends and colleagues, in the same way del.icio.us has become a way to structure and enhance (via links with the same colleagues and friends) my knowledge network.

Philippe however had a point when he said that the future of social software lies in more user-friendly modes of authoring and participation, which will lead to new forms of media consumption (slide 21-24) and to illustrate this point he showed us a demo of the Piazza San Marco on Photosynth. But then again, I don't think Twitter & del.icio.us have usability issues, but that the benefit they offer is not yet perceived as a need by a majority of the internet population at the moment.