Study: Microsoft has 'fallen off the mainstream media’s radar' | Hacker News Reader

Study: Microsoft has 'fallen off the mainstream media’s radar'

techflash.com

16 pointscwan14 comments

This is more significant than you might expect from a first glance.

the media writes about companies or technologies that are innovative, game changing, cool, popular, controversial or scandalous. Companies that are feared, loved or admired get press - companies that aren't don't.

If you look at the press Microsoft is getting relative to its size (whether you choose turnover, profits, number of employees, market cap or any other metric) it's even worse. Microsofts market cap is $214 billion[1] and twitters is $1 billion[2], yet twitter receives twice as much press as Microsoft. If you factor in the fact that almost every technology consumer on earth has some sort of exposure to Microsoft (thus making it an obvious company to write about for the press) it's even worse.

This is a strong indication that Microsoft is neither feared, loved or admired. It seems like a company past it's prime.

[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=msft

[2] http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N39/long2.html

Interesting, but more telling to me is the fact that Microsoft is rarely brought up in Silicon Valley (yes, I'm sure it is some places and I know they have a campus in the valley). That is, rarely brought up in terms of innovation. I don't know anyone who talks about how to get hired by Microsoft, I don't know anyone who talks about what they're releasing or what research they've done aside from fixing vulnerabilities. Occasionally I or someone will boot into Windows 7 to see if something works correctly and say "hm, doesn't look too bad. wouldn't use it for real though."

I ride caltrain into SF every morning through most of the valley. Lots of laptops on the commuter trains. Maybe 1 in 5 is running windows. To me, this is a much bigger indication that, as mixmax put, the company is past its prime.

On the other hand, it could just be that they've faded into the background. People don't often spend hours discussing something that is 'the default.' Windows isn't going anywhere for a long time.

Windows isn't going anywhere for a long time.

True in multiple senses.

That's a good point - you don't hear much about IBM either. Though Microsoft is much more consmuer oriented, and thus more known to the average Joe.

>This is a strong indication that Microsoft is neither feared, loved or admired. It seems like a company past it's prime.

It also means that Microsoft might have become ubiquitous and is thus easily ignored.

People don't write about the wonders of refrigerators or toothbrushes -- yet they are everywhere and people are spending money on them.

Not enough at this site to be worth reading.

Filler. Link-bait.

If this topic is interesting, here's the original source for the article over at Pew, and which has a little more detail:

http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/when_technology_ma...

And here's what that whole Techflash article was hung on:

"...Microsoft, on the other hand, once the feared technology behemoth, fell far behind—attracting just a fifth of the coverage of Apple and less than half that of Twitter..."

The business press is like the t-rex in Jurassic Park - they only see motion. Microsoft is big, but not growing.

I take it as a validation of how meaningless most business news is. Take Microsoft out of the equation so there is no emotional spark and replace it with IBM or Oracle. Both kill Twitter and Facebook in revenues and net income, but I rarely see anything about them in the news. Just because they're not interesting doesn't mean they're not profitable.

In other words "Apple dominates tech news"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1730962

If it were true it might be a good thing in the sense of more privacy to create great products, without the scrutiny they have gotten recently...

I can't think of anything Microsoft has done recently that would be interesting to mainstream consumers.

I saw some new Xbox thing at Gamestop this weekend that looked cool: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/kinect -- uses cameras for gameplay in a wii-like way.

The funny thing is that Xbox has almost become a brand unto itself at this point. I've been following it since the beginning, and even so I forget Microsoft is behind it.

With J. Allard and Robbie Bach gone, that could easily change. Without fierce, passionate protectors who get it, Microsoft could easily screw up one of their most awesome products.

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