Well, I arrived yesterday just in time to stand in line about two and a half hours to hear the keynote address by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. The production was typically professional and had that larger-than-life feel to it. I found some of the stats he threw out to be fairly spectacular, especially in this age when we’re told that the economy is in the dumper and we’re all doomed economically. For instance, Microsoft now has over A BILLION paying customers worldwide. And the sales of their new Kinect product for the Christmas season exceeded expectations. They had hoped to sell 5,000,000 units, instead they sold 8,000,000 units. And that they’ve just finished their best year EVER.
I couldn’t help but notice the strong similarity between a general philosophy he espoused and that of Facebook and other big companies . . . and how SIMILAR this is to GlobalTmail’s mission. He talked incessantly about ‘real-time connectivity’ with the things and people you care about. Gee. THAT sounds familiar. It’s what we’ve been working on for more than 5 years now. Naturally, everything he presented was slick, polished and uber-professional. But nothing was a direct competition to our own mission, which is to take the primary activities people do online:
Search
Instant Messaging
Auction
Matching
Email
Social Networking
Classifieds
Texting
Coupons
. . . and provide instant alerts about whatever is happening in those areas in the form of pre-recorded voice calls to the phone, text messaging and social network alerts. Add to this our own emphasis on sending voice messages to phones and we’re well-positioned to provide a massive world-wide communications tool that is still unprecedented, even in the face of such massive companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, YouTube and many others, all of whom are vying for that “real-time connectivity” through mobile devices that’s so popular these days.
No, I’m not at all intimidated by the over-the-top presentation last night. Instead, I’m inspired, knowing that we’re very much on the right track and pursuing the type of service that indeed will be used by the masses as we roll out service after service in the coming year or two.
The Microsoft presentation focused on their 3 areas of concern: Gaming, Windows Phone and PC. Gaming has gone way beyond just “gaming” with their Kinect tool. If you don’t already know, it’s a technology that says “you are the controller”. It detects your body motions and allows those motions to control the game, TV, movie, etc. They say it’s ultra-simple. Yeah. Right. The clear emphasis was on their Windows and Phone OS 7 which they claim (and I believe) is their best-ever offering. It works better, is more robust and actually utilizes more resources in a more efficient way than ever before. All-in-all, the presentation was great, but lacked the entertainment value of past presentations. They normally bring in some big act (Conan O’Brien, Jay Leno, etc.) to liven things up. No such entertainment last night. It was just all Microsoft. But well-done.
OK, that’s enough for now. I’m off to the races for today! The show starts soon and I have a boat-load of research-shopping-gadget-fidgeting to do today! Check in tomorrow for my report of first-day’s activity!
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