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Do we have one site too many?

  • Article

In the past month if you’ve interacted with via twitter, email, facebook etc you’ve probably been asked by me “How many sites do you visit a week”.

I only ask is that I've got this theory or ill feeling that we at Microsoft are making far too many websites than we need to, but at this point it’s just a theory (i have no evidence or data to substantiate this theory either)

I’ve created some artist mockups of where I’d love to one day position Microsoft and the way in which we interact with the community  and potential customers. It’s an ongoing project, one that I’m doing to provoke some new thinking inside the company, but first I at times need to pitch what I think the initial problem is. Have a look and tell me if you agree or disagree?

Slide 1 – What do all these sites have in common?

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Slide 2 – They can be quite frustrating to discover and use?

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Slide 3 – They require unnecessary persistence.

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Slide 4 – They echo the same data at times ..at a rate that makes your head spin.

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Slide 5 – They require you to think in multiple personalities.

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Slide 6 – They all try and be different, but the end user is usually the same.

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That’s the theory anyway. What do you think?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 17, 2009
    I think you are onto something. Recently I was looking for the asp.net mvc forum. I searched everywhere on the msdn forums, only to find that www.asp.net has its own forums.

  • Anonymous
    August 17, 2009
    You have identified the right problem in right way. Keep going. so many domains .. so many forums ,,, . vikas

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    Yes, no argument here.  I think this is already happening with Ch9/on10 etc.. to be honest. A single site with tailored content for the user is much better than multiple sites with different assumed personalities.

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    I kind of agree. I think there are too many sites that are trying to be too many things. Because of this, they are overly generalized.  I think the direction that Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc... are going will align them to be starting points into peoples lives. I think other sites are going to be able to provide value by digging into a specific portion of an individual's life. I might be wrong. But this is the thought I used while creating http://www.divotdog.com (it's a beta, it's early, and yes, there are bugs). Basically, this site allows individuals to dig into one specific portion of a person's life: golf.

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2009
    Agreed here too.  As an occasional user of some of these sites, I perhaps don't use them as much as i might.  A search for something Silverlight or Blend related (problem, error, resource...) may bring up 3 or 4 of these different sites, and i find myself clicking through tabs to find the answer. I can see that they seem to have slightly different targets (though not particularly obvious what each may be), but all seem relevant to me. User centred design is where it's at.  

  • Anonymous
    August 20, 2009
    Technical professionals have MSDN & TechNet.  Is there a main portal for creative professionals?  (art, movie, photo, webdesign, etc)

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2010
    The comment has been removed