Comments on: tiny ship

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:50:37 +0000

p.s. @Scoble… blog/twitter links please?

By: Matt Gillooly

Matt Gillooly — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:48:13 +0000

@Steve and @Scoble:
First off, I hope this team is as awesome as it sounds. Clearly, I have no way of telling yet.
Listening does not require talking… but communication requires both. There are some conversations that can be understood just by listening, but many others that require 2-way interaction… Specifically, how do you know this team is so cool if no consumer is talking about it yet?
In this case, it probably is cool, based solely on the fact that your judgment seems mostly pretty good, Scoble.
But my point is that, in the general case, listening is not taking full advantage of a conversation. For instance, I’m currenty learning much more than I would if I read Hugh’s blog without commenting (as I usually have done).

By: Robert Scoble

Robert Scoble — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 01:54:09 +0000

Matt: right, this team is in silent mode. Listening does NOT require talking! Although when they talk you’ll probably say “that’s cool.”
They all have blogs and Twitter accounts and read TechMeme.
But it’s only a small team of a handful of people. If I saw 10 teams like this I’d say Microsoft has an Internet strategy. But, so far, I’ve only seen a small number of teams. Out of 70,000 employees it’s sad that more aren’t engaging in the market conversation that’s going on on the street, not just on blogs.

By: steve clayton

steve clayton — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 17:39:29 +0000

aha…gotcha Matt. Sounds like the team has been listening but now keeping their powder dry for big announcment at Mix. I don’t know for sure though. We’ve been pretty poor at keeping secrets a surprise over the years so lets hope it’s a good one

By: Matt Gillooly

Matt Gillooly — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 14:39:49 +0000

@Steve: I was referring to Scoble’s remark: “I know of one cool team at Redmond that’s about to bring out something small at Mix07. It’s not a big thing that’ll kill Amazon or Google. It’s a small thing. But it’ll get lots of hype.”
I have no idea what team it is, and he isn’t telling us. This gives me the impression that the team in question hasn’t fully engaged in the conversation.
They might be listening, which is good and all, but given what people say their problems are versus where the problem actually is… I think the divide between the two is sufficiently well known that it’s clear: it takes 2-way communication to solve the right thing.
The main exception, of course, is when the developers are also the prototypical users. For all I know, this is the case here.

By: steve clayton

steve clayton — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 01:59:07 +0000

which team are you referring to matt?

By: Matt Gillooly

Matt Gillooly — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 20:37:21 +0000

@Scoble: Listening to the conversation is important, yes, but why isn’t this team a contributing part of the conversation yet? (I just assume that if they were already contributing, there would be some link love happening here.)
Is listening enough? Can MS afford just to listen, or is that really just the first step towards what they really need to do, which is to engage in the conversation?
Seems like way too much can still go wrong if you eavesdrop and just assume you’re hearing and understanding the right things.