Introducing the Microsoft News Center

Posted by Frank X. Shaw,
Corporate Vice President, Corporate Communications

For the past decade, PressPass has been the official voice of Microsoft to people who are interested in the company. This week, we’re launching a refreshed and renewed version of the site, with a new name (Microsoft News Center) and more content than ever – full details can be found here. As part of the redesign, we are also establishing an official company blog (this one!).

Almost from the inception of blogging, Microsoft has had a large group of passionate and prolific bloggers at the company. Today, nearly all of our major teams have an official blog which serves as the nexus for the conversations that spring up about products, features, issues and news relevant to that group and the audiences who care about it. Because of this, and because of the way we’ve used PressPass, we’ve never established an “official” blog for the company overall.

As we stepped back and started thinking about how PressPass needed to evolve, it became clear that while we now have a great place to put rich media and information about *what* Microsoft and its partners are doing, we also need a place to have conversations about what we *think* and believe, and to offer perspective on what is happening at Microsoft, or in the world of technology more broadly.

In some ways, this makes the blog the opinion section for the News Center, and the place where we’ll likely first post statements and commentary on breaking news about the company. We’ll also use this blog to point to other sites/blogs at Microsoft when they’re more relevant on issues du jour.

You can expect to see a variety of people at Microsoft post to this blog – and each blog will be signed by the person who authored it. Our goal is to start relatively slowly, which means a post or maybe two per day for the next month or so. And like some other company blogs, we are not enabling comments initially, but once we’ve gotten into a rhythm we do hope to enable comments and foster a greater dialogue with readers.

The main place to find news and information will remain the News Center – you’ll be able to see a great example of what we’ll be doing there by checking in on our CES information throughout this week.

I’m sure we’ll evolve the entire News Center site and this blog as we get feedback and see what works and what doesn’t. So welcome, check back, and feel free to give us feedback by sending mail to PressEd@microsoft.com.