Old Dog Learns New Tricks
When Microsoft bought a 1.6% share of Facebook last month it was a little weird for me. The acquisition actually looked a little pathetic; it was kind of like watching my dad try on designer jeans – “it’s cool and hip, everyone is doing it but I’m not sure that’s your style.” I nearly reverted back to middle school and called Microsoft a “poser” for being a wannabe web 2.0 company.
At first glance the buy in looked like a standard tech company strategy play; perpetuating the arms race by buying startups and making timely announcements of acquisitions to move stock price. Then I thought to myself, “When did Microsoft ever buy into this social networking phenomenon?” Ahh yes, with Zune. Sort of.
Microsoft’s first attempt at a strategy leveraging the popularity of social networking had a creepy feel to it since it relied solely on trading songs with other Zune owners for a temporary period of time. Since no one bought the Zune because iPods were pwning (yes, pwning) the market, Microsoft inadvertently sent the message, “talk to strangers”, since everyone that owned a Zune was the only one of their friends that owned one.
Now, Microsoft’s second attempt isn’t official, but by the looks of things they are on the right track with their shiny new stake in Facebook. On the Microsoft site it was noted that they wanted to build a social networking community that would allow users to share music over their profiles. If that is there intention, then they certainly teamed up with the right people (Facebook) especially considering MySpace already has its own music agenda. Out of nowhere, Microsoft has created an opportunity for itself to benefit from the social networking trend and the confused music industry.
The next steps that Microsoft takes are going to be what is exciting to watch; to see if they can actually turn this into something profitable. I believe they could potentially turn Facebook into their own little music sharing/buying machine that gets people into the Zune. Microsoft can build their own Facebook application that would facilitate sharing your music library with your friends that also have a Zune or they can buy the iLike application which essentially does the same thing.
This all sounds fine and dandy, but may be less effective and less profitable in reality. That issue however is not my problem, and I’ll leave the brains at Microsoft to figure that one out. I’m excited to see if this old dog can learn some new tricks.
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